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THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



THE MIND AND ITS 
EDUCATION 



BY 



GEORGE HERBERT BETTS 

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND 
EDUCATION IN CORNELL COLLEGE 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAh 17 1906 

//? Cftpyrighl Entry 
CLASS O: XXc. No. 
' COPY B. 






COPTBIGHT, 1906, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



I- 



PEEFACE 



This book is intended as an introduction to psychology 
for teachers, both in their private study and their Reading 
Circle classes, for students in secondary schools, normal 
schools or colleges, and for general readers. Its appearance 
is an immediate outgrowth of various courses of lectures 
on psychology and education given to classes of teachers 
and elementary students in education. More remotely, it 
owes its origin to a suggestion received from Prof. John 
Dewey when the writer was a student in his classes. Said 
Professor Dewey: " The teacher is equally under the ne- 
cessity of knowing each of the two factors in the educational 
process — culture and the child ; that is, subject-matter and 
psychology — not the technicalities and controversial points 
of psychology, but its broad and fundamental truths, upon 
which practically all are agreed, and which, fortunately, 
are simple and easily understood.'* This statement fur- 
nishes the standpoint, in the following pages, for both 
subject-matter and method of treatment. 

First, the attempt has been made to present only funda- 
mental truths, which, let us be thankful, are but little sub- 
ject to controversy. No space has been devoted to the con- 
troversial, speculative, or hypothetical questions which are 



Vi PREFACE 

vexing the soul of the advanced student of psychology. 
Considerable emphasis has been placed on the physiological 
processes which accompany our mental life, but always for 
the purpose of throwing light on our mental processes and 
without losing sight of the fact that the discussion has to 
do primarily with psychology rather than with physiology. 

Second, the aim has been to state these fundamental 
truths simply, that the student may clearly understand 
them ; and also to state them attractively, that he may cul- 
tivate the desire for reading them. These two considera- 
tions have had much to do with determining the style and 
method of treatment. The more popular, if less literary, 
lecture style has been used in preference to the essay style. 
This was done because of the eagerness with which young 
students, who are afraid of the average work on psychology, 
will seize upon the very same subject-matter when it is 
stripped of all unnecessary abstruseness, and presented 
with a sufficient amount of illustration to clothe the skele- 
ton of dry facts with something of vitality. 

Third, it is recognized that if the student is really to 
make use of the psychology he learns, he must have prac- 
tical and useful truths presented to him, and must be led 
to a comprehension of these truths through their relation to 
his own actual experience. This criterion dictates that the 
subject-matter presented shall be of such a nature that its 
counterpart can be found in the experience of the student, 
and discovered by him through the process of introspec- 
tion ; that the psychological truths and laws discovered must 
find application in acquiring new experience — ^that is, in 



PREFACE vii 

education; that the psychology must be applied, or better, 
it must be studied with the individual student himself as 
its center and subject, so that the application is never sepa- 
rated from the process of its discovery. 

The foregoing views account for the fact that the text 
is much more descriptive than explanatory; that a con- 
stant appeal is made to the experience of the student to 
verify the statements of the text; that the matter presented 
is so largely concrete and so little abstract; that the appli- 
cation of psychological truths and laws is continually made 
to development and education. 

The various exercises suggested at the ends of the chap- 
ters will be found useful not because they outline the re- 
spective chapters in any systematic way, but because they 
will encourage introspection, without which psychology 
may be committed to memory but can never become a 
directive factor in education. The reading references will 
be serviceable to the student who desires to pursue the sub- 
ject beyond the scope of this book. 

My colleague. Prof. John E. Stout, has rendered valu- 
able assistance in the preparation of the manuscript for 
this book, for which grateful acknowledgment is given. 

Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, 
February, 1906. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 

PAGE 

How we may come to know the mind. — The personal character 
^of consciousness. — Where the mind resides. — ^The means by 
which each may study his own mind ; introspection. — The 
mental processes revealed by introspection. — Consciousness 
likened to a stream ; points of resemblance. — The wave in 
the stream ; attention. — The contents of the stream. — The 
three modes of activity in which consciousness manifests 
itself : knowing, feeling, willing ...... 1 

CHAPTER II 

ATTENTION 

The nature of attention. — Some degree of attention present at all 
times. — The effects of attention ; increase of efficiency through 
concentration. — How we attend. — ^Types of inattention. — 
Cultivation of attention. — How attention is secured ; involun- 
tary attention, nonvoluntary attention, voluntary attention. 
— Interest and nonvoluntary attention. — The will and vol- 
untary attention. — Interrelation of the two types of attention. 
— The habit of attention 12 

CHAPTER III 

THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 

The mind and the brain. — The nervous system the machine 
through which the mind works. — The structure of the nervous 
system. — The neuron. — ^The central nervous system ; brain 
and cord. — The peripheral nervous system ; end organs. — 

ix 



CONTENTS 



Division of labor in the nervous system ; sensory and motor 
functions. — The end organs and the external world. — Depend- 
ence of the mind on the senses for its material . . .25 

CHAPTER IV 

SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 

Education dependent on both body and mind. — Efficiency of nerv- 
ous system resting largely on development and nutrition. — 
Undeveloped potentialities of our nervous systems. — Develop- 
ment through varied stimuli and untrammeled response. — 
The factors involved in a simple act. — Application to educa- 
tion, — The effect of fatigue and malnutrition. — Factors in- 
volved in good nutrition. — Necessity for sleep and freedom 
from worry and overfatigue ...... 43 

CHAPTER V 

^,.,.- — --^ HABIT 

The part which habit plays in our life. — Habit a method of 
economy. — Physical habits. — Mental habits. — Our powerless- 
ness to prevent habits from forming. — The physical basis of 
habit ; our nervous system an automatic register of our acts. 
— Control of our habits through our acts. — The part of habit 
in education. — Youth the time of habit-forming. — The value 
of certain habits. — Danger even in good habits. — Maxims 
for habit-forming ........ 56 

CHAPTER VI 

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 

The constant appeal made to the mind by our environment. — 
The mind constructing its world of material objects from these 
stimuli. — How thought reaches beyond the knowledge of 
the senses. — ^The senses working together in a copartnership. — 
The sensory processes ; interaction of stimulus and nervous 
mechanism. — ^The qualities which we usually ascribe to objects 
really existent in the mind. — The problem which confronts the 
child ; how he proceeds. — Our problem and process the same. 



CONTENTS xi 



— How perception of objects and of space is accomplished. — 
Sensation and perception the basis for our thought structure. 
— Necessity of entering largely into the world of our material 
environment . . 70 

CHAPTER VII 

MENTAL IMAGERY 

All present thinking dependent on past experience. — How the past 
interprets the present and future. — How past experience is 
conserved : on the physical side by habit, on the mental side 
in images. — ^The study of our mental images through intro- 
spection. — Galton's test of imagery. — The value of a wide 
range of imagery. — The use of imagery in the interpretation of 
literature and other studies. — Development of the power of 
imagery. — Application to education . . . . .90 

CHAPTER VIII 



The nature of memory.— Its physical basis. — Retention and recall 
dependent on neural plasticity and activity. — Individual differ- 
ences in brains. — Images the material of memory. — Types of 
memory. — The laws of memory. — Association ; its laws inex- 
orable. — The necessity for right thinking. — What constitutes 
a good memory. — Improvement of the memory ; physiological 
conditions ; methods of recording facts. — ^The misuse of mne- 
monic devices ......... 107 

CHAPTER IX 

IMAGINATION 

The test of a good imagination ; various standards. — Necessity 
for different types of imagination. — The use of imagination 
in interpreting the thought of others ; in our own thinking. — 
Some practical applications : in science ; in the arts ; in the 
humdrum of every-day life ; in conduct ; in building ideals. — 
Imagination limited (1) by material available in form of 
images, (2) by constructive ability, (3) by definite purpose. — 
Abuse of the imagination. — Cultivation of the imagination . 128 



Xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

THINKING 

PAGE 

Interdependence of physical and mental objects. — The function of 
thinking, to discover relations. — The thinking of the child 
and that of the adult. — The necessity for classification in our 
knowledge. — How this is accompHshed through thinking. — 
The nature and formation of the concept. — The necessity for 
good concepts. — Judgment, its forms and uses. — Reasoning. 
— How we proceed in reasoning. — Its types, and how they are 
related. — The necessity for broad inductions. — The syllogism 
and its use. — Cultivation of thinking . . . . .143 



^ 



CHAPTER XI 

INSTINCT 



The influence of heredity in our lives. — Instinct the result of race 
experience. — ^The function of instinct. — Through instinct the 
habits of the race inherited by the individual. — How instincts 
are modified through education and made into individual hab- 
its. — The ripening of instincts. — Transitoriness of instincts. — 
The human instincts of imitation, fear, and play . .161 

CHAPTER XII 

FEEL NG AND ITS FUNCTION 

The importance of feeling as a motive. — Definition. — Feeling an 
accompaniment of all mental processes. — The qualities of feel- 
ing. — Feeling tone, or mood ; how produced, and its influence. 
— How our dispositions are formed ; the part played by tem- 
perament. — ^The nature and growth of our sentiments ; their 
force as motives . . . . • . . .182 

CHAPTER XIII 

INTEREST 

Interest a selective agency among our activities. — Its influence in 
directing our stream of thought. — The nature of interest ; re- 
lation to a subjective scale of values. — Objective side of inter- 
est. — The dynamic phase of interest. — Immediate and remote 
interests, and the part they play as motives.— Transitory in- 



CONTENTS xiii 

PAGE 

terests. — ^The necessity for making a selection among our inter- 
ests. — Danger of early specialization in our interests. — Interest 
and the will. — Interest and character ..... 195 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE EMOTIONS 

The relation of instinct and emotion. — Emotion and the physical 
response. — Physiological explanation of emotion. — The con- 
trol of our emotions. — Dependence of emotion on expression. 
— Growing tendency toward emotional control. — A desirable 
emotional balance. — ^The emotions and enjoyment. — The emo- 
tions as motives. — Cultivation of the emotions. — Danger from 
overwrought emotions, and from arousing the emotions with- 
out giving opportunity for expression. — Emotional habits . 212 

CHAPTER XV 

THE WILL 

The function of the will : concerning itself wholly with causing or 
inhibiting acts. — Various types of action ; physiological re- 
flexes ; instinctive acts ; ideo-motor acts ; deliberative acts. 
— Volitional acts preceded by nonvolitional. — The image 
and the act. — The process of deliberation. — The emotional 
factor in decision. — Types of decision. — The final test of power 
measured in attention. — ^Types of will. — Training of the will in 
the common duties of daily life. — The freedom of the will . 226 

CHAPTER XVI 

SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 

Interrelation of impression and expression. — ^The many sources of 
impressions. — ^The various forms of expression. — ^The necessity 
for cultivating expression. — The intellectual value of expres- 
sion. — The moral value. — The religious value. — ^The social 
value. — The educational value. — Expression in the home and 
in the schools. — Expression as related to character . . 246 

INDEX 259 



CHAPTER I 

THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 

The mind and its education. But how are we to How mind 
discover the nature of the mind, or know the proe- kno^w^n 
esses by which it works? For mind is not some- 
thing that can be seen or felt or weighed. You and 
I may look into each other's face and there read 
something of the mind's activity, but neither can 
discover the real you of the other. I may learn to 
recognize your features, to know your voice, to re- 
spond to the clasp of your hand; but the mind, or 
consciousness, which does your thinking, and feels 
your joys and sorrows, I can never know completely 
—indeed can never know at all except through your 
various acts and bodily expressions. Nor can you in 
any way reveal yourself to me except through these 
means. 

Between your consciousness and mine there exists The per- 
a wide gap, which cannot be bridged no matter how Ictero?^""' 
well we become acquainted with each other. We may conscious- 
work together, live together, come to love or hate ''^^^' 
each other even, and yet our inmost selves forever 
stand apart. Only ijou can ever know you, and only 
/ can ever know I in any intimate and first-hand way. 
When I consider how you must think or feel or act 
under certain circumstances, I am really but inter- 
preting my own thoughts and feelings and actions 
under similar circumstances, and attributing them to 

1 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



you. I must always judge you in terms of myself or 
else not at all. 

I dwell somewhere in this body, but where ? When 
my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I 
seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary 
from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart 
throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow 
tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, I seem to 
be in them all. When, filled with the buoyant life 
of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle 
with health and enthusiasm, I live in every part of 
my marvelous body. Small wonder that the ancients 
located the soul at one time in the heart, at another 
in the pineal gland of the brain, and at another made 
it coextensive with the body ! 

Later science has taught that the mind resides in 
and works through the nervous system, which has its 
central office in the train. And the reason why I 
seem to be in every part of my body is because the 
nervous system extends to every part, carrying mes- 
sages of sight or sound or touch to the brain, and 
bearing in return orders for movements, which set 
the feet a-dancing or the fingers a-tingling. But 
more of this later. 

What is the mind^ What is that which we call 
consciousness ? No definition can ever make it clearer 
than it is now to each one of us. And, indeed, if I 
were to attempt to define mind or consciousness, from 
any immediate knowledge of it, I should have to de- 
fine my mind and not mind. The only mind which 
I have ever known, or can know, is my own ; and the 
only one which you have ever known, or can know, 
is yours. It is true that I may judge something of 
the working of your mind from the fact that you 



THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 3 

seem to act, think, love and hate, deliberate and de- 
cide, much as I do ; but yet I judge these things con- 
cerning your mind because I have experienced them 
in my own. Thus it follows that the only way to 
know what mind is, is to look in upon our own con- 
sciousness and observe what is transpiring there, or, 
in the language of the psychologist, to introspect. 
For you can never come to understand the workings 
of your mind from listening to lectures or studying 
books alone. These may show you what to look for 
and expect, but every statement must be tested by 
your own experience before you can understand its 
meaning. In order to introspect you must catch 
yourself in the act of thinking, of remembering, of 
loving, of deciding, and all the rest, and observe what 
it is that is going on. This is not so easy as it appears ; 
for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, 
that moment it changes, and the thing we meant to 
examine is gone, and something else has taken its 
place. All that is left to us then is to view the men- 
tal object while it is still fresh in the memory, or to 
catch it again when it returns. 

Nor are we to be discouraged if, even by introspec- Introspec- 

.. jt - -I T I j^i •!• tion cannot 

tion, we cannot discover precisely what the mmd is. reveal 
No one knows what electricity is, though nearly every- ^^^ ^^ 
one uses it in one form or another. We study the 
dynamo, the motor, and the conductors through which 
electricity manifests itself. We observe its effects in 
light, heat, and mechanical power, and so learn the 
laws which govern its operations. But we are almost 
as far from understanding its true nature as were 
the ancients who knew nothing of its uses. The dy- 
namo does not create the electricity, but only fur- 
nishes the conditions which make it possible for elec- 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



But it can 
discover 
the process 
of its 
working. 



Nature of 
the proc- 
ess — a 
stream. 



tricity to manifest itself in doing the world's work. 
Likewise the brain or nervous system does not create 
the mind, but it furnishes the machine through which 
the mind works. We may study the nervous system 
and learn something of the conditions and limitations 
under which the mind operates, but this is not study- 
ing the mind itself. As in the case of electricity, 
what we know about the mind we must learn through 
the activities in which it manifests itself — these we 
can know, for they are in the experience of all. It 
is, then, only by studying these processes of con- 
sciousness that we come to know the laws which gov- 
ern the mind and its development. What it is that 
thinks and feels and wills in us is too hard a problem 
for us here — indeed, has been too hard a problem for 
the philosophers through the ages. But the thinking 
and feeling and willing we can watch as they occur, 
and hence come to know. 

In looking in upon the mind we must expect to dis- 
cover, then, not a thing, but a process. The thing 
forever eludes us, but the process is always present. 
Consciousness is like a stream, which, so far as we 
are concerned with it in a psychological discussion, 
has its rise at the cradle and its end at the grave. It 
begins with the babe's first faint gropings after light 
in his new world as he enters it, and ends with the 
man 's last blind gropings after light in his old world 
as he leaves it. The stream is very narrow at first, 
only as wide as the few sensations which come to the 
babe when it sees the light or hears the sound; it 
grows wider as the mind develops, and is at last 
measured by the grand sum total of life's experience. 

This mental stream is irresistible. No power outside 
of us can stop it while life lasts. We cannot stop it 



THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 5 

ourselves. When we try to stop thinking, the stream 
but changes its direction and flows on. While we 
wake and while we sleep, while we are unconscious 
under an anaesthetic, even, some sort of mental proc- 
ess continues. Sometimes the stream flows slowly, 
and our thoughts lag — we " feel slow "; again the 
stream flows faster, and we are lively and our thoughts 
come with a rush; or a fever seizes us and delirium 
comes on ; then the stream runs wildly onward, defy- 
ing our control, and a mad jargon of thoughts takes 
the place of our usual orderly array. In different 
persons, also, the mental stream moves at different 
rates, some minds being naturally slow moving and 
some naturally quick in their operations. 

Consciousness resembles a stream also in other par- Points of 
ticulars. A stream is an unbroken whole from its wanceto 
source to its mouth, and an observer stationed at one ^ stream, 
point cannot see all of it at once. He sees but the 
one little section which happens to be passing his sta- 
tion point at the time. The current may look much 
the same from moment to moment, but the component 
particles which constitute the stream are constantly 
changing. So it is with our thought. Its stream is 
continuous from birth till death, but we cannot see 
any considerable portion of it at one time. When we 
turn about quickly and look in upon our minds, we 
see but the little section of consciousness which occu- 
pies the present moment. That of a few seconds ago 
is gone and will never return. The thought which 
occupied us a moment since can no more be recalled, 
just as it was, than can the particles composing a 
stream be re-collected and made to pass a given point 
in its course in precisely the same order and relation 
to one another as before. This means, then, that we 



6 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

can never have precisely the same mental state twice ; 
that the same thought never comes to us a second time 
with just the same associates that it had the first time ; 
that the thought of this moment will never be ours 
again ; that all we can know of our minds at any one 
time is the part of the process present in conscious- 
ness at that moment. 

The surface of our mental stream is not level, but 
is broken by a wave which stands above the rest; 
which is but another way of saying that some one 
thing is always more prominent in our thought than 
the rest. Only when we are in a sleepy reverie, or 
not thinking about much of anything, does the stream 
approximate a level. At all other times some one 
object occupies the highest point in our thought, to 



nE;a\i\V sexi'i^^VpYv&ir'A^wi \ms^d^e4.;;H.dtovv5y y viouojofc 



Fig. 1. 



the more or less complete exclusion of other things 
which we might think about. A thousand and one 
objects are possible to our thought at any moment, 
but all except the one thing occupy a secondary place, 
or are not present to our consciousness at all. They 
exist on the margin, or else are clear off the edge of 
consciousness, while the one thing occupies the center. 
We may be reading a fascinating book late at night 
in a cold room. The charm of the writer, the beauty 
of the heroine, or the bravery of the hero so occupies 
the mind that the weary eyes and chattering teeth 
are unnoticed. Consciousness has piled up in a high 
wave on the points of interest in the book, and the 



THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 7 

bodily sensations are for the moment on a much lower 
level. But let the book grow dull for a moment, and 
the make-up of the stream changes in a flash. Hero, 

and -Wtovvve' 



•b en^; a\ vOTVti, • of :CpU: aiv\d >tx\ary\nq^-e)irie^ 
Fig. 2. 

heroine, or literary style no longer occupies the wave. 
They forfeit their place, the wave is taken by the 
bodily sensations, and we are conscious of the smart- 
ing eyes and shivering body, while these in turn give 




Fig. 3. 

way to the next object which occupies the wave. Figs. 
1-3 illustrate these changes. 

The consciousness of any moment has been less hap- Conscious- 
pily likened to a field, in the center of which there is "ned toa 
an elevation higher than the surrounding level. This fi®^^- 
center is where consciousness is piled up on the object 
which is for the moment foremost in our thought. 
The other objects of our consciousness are on the mar- 
gin of the field for the time being, but any of them 
may the next moment claim the center and drive the 
former object to the margin, or it may drop entirely 
out of consciousness. This moment a noble resolve 



8 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The "piling 
up " of con- 
sciousness 
is atten- 
tion. 



The con- 
tents of 
our mental 
stream. 



may occupy the center of the field, while a trouble- 
some tooth begets sensations of discomfort which lin- 
ger dimly on the outskirts of our consciousness; but 
a shooting pain from the tooth or a random thought 
crossing the mind, and lo ! the tooth holds sway, and 
the resolve dimly fades away to the margin of our 
consciousness and is gone. 

This figure is not so true as the one which likens 
our mind to a stream with its ever onward current 
answering to the flow of our thought; but whichever 
figure we employ, the truth remains the same. Con- 
sciousness is always piled up higher at some one point 
than at others. Either because our interest leads us, 
or because the will dictates, the mind is withdrawn 
from the thousand and one things which we might 
think about, and directed to this one thing, which for 
the time occupies chief place. In other words, we 
attend, for this piling up of consciousness is nothing, 
after all, but attention. 

We have seen that our mental life may be likened 
to a stream flowing now faster, now slower, ever shift- 
ing, never ceasing. We have yet to inquire what con- 
stitutes the mass of the stream, or, in popular phrase, 
what is the " stuff " which makes up the current of 
our thought, what are the contents of our minds. 
This cannot be answered completely at this point, but 
can best be understood by each referring to his own 
experience to verify the description of the text. If 
we are sitting at our study table puzzling over a dif- 
ficult problem in geometry, reasoning forms the wave 
in the stream of consciousness — the center of the field. 
It is the chief thing in our thinking. The fringe of our 
consciousness is made up of various sensations of the 
light from the lamp, the contact of our clothing, the 



THE MIND. OR CONSCIOUSNESS 9 

sounds going on in the next room, some bit of memory- 
seeking recognition, a ' ' tramp ' ' thought which comes 
along, and a dozen other experiences not strong enough 
to occupy the center of the field. 

But instead of the study table and the problem, 
give us a bright fireside, an easy-chair, and nothing 
to do. If we are aged, memories — images from out 
the past, will probably come thronging in and occupy 
the field to such extent that the fire burns low and the 
room grows cold; but still the forms from the past 
hold sway. If we are young, visions of the future 
may crowd everything else to the margin of the field, 
while the '' castles in Spain " occupy the center. 

Our memories may also be accompanied by emo- 
tions — sorrow, love, anger, hate, envy, joy. And, in- 
deed, these emotions may so completely occupy the 
field that the images themselves are for the time 
driven to the margin, and the mind is occupied with 
its sorrow, its love, or its joy. 

Once more, instead of the problem or the memories 
or the '' castles in Spain," give us the necessity of 
making some decision, great or small, where con- 
tending motives are pulling us now in this direction, 
now in that, so that the question finally has to be 
settled by a supreme effort summed up in the words, 
I will. This is the struggle of the will which each 
one knows for himself, for who has not had a raging 
battle of motives occupy the center of the field while 
all else, even the sense of time, place, and existence, 
gave way in the face of this conflict! This struggle 
continues until the decision is made, when suddenly 
all the stress and strain drop out and other objects 
may again have their place in consciousness. 

Thus we see that if we could cut the stream of con- 



10 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

sciousness across as we might cut a stream of water 
from bank to bank with a huge knife, and then look at 
the cut-off section, we should find very different con- 
stituents in the stream at different times. We should 
at one time find the mind manifesting itself in per- 
ceiving, rememhering, imagining, discriminating, com- 
paring, judging, reasoning, or the acts by which we 
gain our knowledge; at another in fearing, loving, 
hating, sorrowing, enjoying, or the acts of feeling; 
at still another in choosing, or the act of the will. 
These processes would make up the stream, or, in 
other words, these are the acts which the mind per- 
forms in doing its work. We should never find a 
time when the stream consists of but one of the proc- 
esses, or when all these modes of mental activity are 
not represented. They will be found in varying pro- 
portions, now more of knowing, now of feeling, and 
now of willing, but some of each is always present in 
our consciousness. The nature of these different ele- 
ments in our mental stream, their relation to each 
other, and the manner in which they all work together 
in amazing perplexity yet in perfect harmony to 
produce the wonderful mind, will constitute the sub- 
ject-matter we shall consider together in the pages 
which follow. 

EXERCISES 

Think of your home as you last left it. Can you see 
vividly just how it looked, the color of the paint on the out- 
side, with the familiar form of the roof and all; can you 
recall the perfume in some old drawer, the taste of a favorite 
dish, the sound of a familiar voice in farewell? 

When you say that you remember a circumstance which 
occurred yesterday, how do you remember it? That is, do 



THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS 11 

you see in your mind things just as they were, and hear 
again sounds which occurred, or feel again movements which 
you performed? Do you experience once more the emo- 
tion you then felt? 

Try occasionally during the next twenty-four hours to turn 
quickly about mentally and see whether you can observe 
your thinking, feeling, or willing in the very act of taking 
place. 

What becomes of our mind or consciousness while we are 
asleep? 

How are we able to wake up at a certain hour previously 
determined? 

Can a person have absolutely nothing in his mind? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XI. 
James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter IX. 
Baldwin, " The Story of the Mind," Chapters II-IV. 
Morgan, " Introduction to Comparative Psychology," Chap- 
ter I. 

Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter II. 

Royce, " Outhnes of Psychology, " Chapter IV, sees. 34-36. 



CHAPTER II 



ATTENTION 



In the last chapter the concentration of conscious- 
ness on one object was described as constituting a 
state of attention. Everyone knows what it is to at- 
tend. The story so fascinating that we cannot leave 
it, the critical points in a game, the interesting ser- 
mon or lecture, the sparkling conversation, the absorb- 
ing lesson or recitation — these all compel our atten- 
tion. We live in them, and are almost unaware of 
what is going on about us. It is easier to attend to 
them than not. But what about the dull story, the 
slow game, the lecture or sermon which drags, the 
conversation which is a bore, the lesson without life 
or interest? These may likewise all receive attention, 
but in this case we attend with effort. A thousand 
things from outside entice us away from them. It 
requires the frequent '' mental jerk " with which 
each is familiar to bring ourselves back to them ; and 
when brought back, we feel the constant " tug " of 
the mind to be free again. 

But this very effort of the mind to free itself from 
one object of thought that it may busy itself with 
another, is because the attention is solicited by this 
other. That is, attention of S07ne sort is present at 
all times when we are thinking, which is only equiva- 
lent to saying that some one object of thought is 
always more prominent than the remainder of the 

12 



ATTENTION 



13 



objects in consciousness at that moment. Indeed, 
without this condition it is doubtful whether we can 
think at all; and, roughly speaking, the efficiency of 
our thinking is directly proportional to our ability 
to attend to one object of thought to the exclusion of 
all others. I say '' to the exclusion of all others '' 
because, when we are attending to a certain object, 
the mind must be withdrawn from a multitude of 
other objects upon which it might rest, and be 
focused on this one thing. Attention is, after all, as 
much attending away from unnecessary or irrelevant 
thoughts as it is attending to necessary and relevant 
ones. 

A state of attention gives us the " wave " in the 
stream of consciousness piled up high above the com- 
mon level of the surface. It gives us the " center " 
of the field rising vivid and clear above the' remainder 
of consciousness. And whatever the wave or center 
may be, whether it be a bit of a memory, an air 
castle, a sensation from an aching tooth, the reason- 
ing on an algebraic formula, a choice which we are 
making, the setting of an emotion — ^whatever be the 
object to which we are attending, that object is 
illumined and made to stand out from its fellows as 
the one prominent thing in the mind's eye while the 
attention rests on it. It is like the one building which 
the search light picks out among a city full of build- 
ings and lights up, while the remainder are left in 
the semilight or in darkness. 

In a state of attention the mind may be likened 
to the rays of the sun which have been passed through 
a burning glass. You may let all the rays which can 
pass through your window pane fall hour after hour 
upon the paper lying on your desk, and no marked 



The effects 
of atten- 
tion. 



Only con- 
centration 
will bring 
results. 



14 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



effects follow. But let the same amount of sun- 
light be passed through a lens and converged to a 
point the size of your pencil point, and the paper 
will at once burst into flame. What the diffused rays 
could not do in hours or in ages is now accomplished 
in seconds. Likewise the mind, allowed to scatter 
over many objects, can accomplish but little. We may 
sit and dream away an hour or a day over a page or 
a problem without securing results. But let us call 
in our wits from their woolgathering and ** buckle 
down to it '' with all our might, withdrawing our 
thoughts from everything else but this one thing, and 
concentrating our mind on it. More can now be 
accomplished in minutes than before in hours. Nay, 
things which could not he accomplished at all before 
now become possible. 

Again, the mind may be compared to a steam engine 
which is constructed to run at a certain pressure of 
steam, say one hundred and fifty pounds to the square 
inch of boiler surface. Once I ran such an engine; 
and well I remember a morning during my early 
apprenticeship when the foreman called for power 
to run some of the lighter machinery, while my steam 
gauge registered but seventy-five pounds. ^ ' Surely, ' * 
I thought, '' if one hundred and fifty pounds will 
run all this machinery, seventy-five pounds should 
run half of it, " so I opened the valve. But the power- 
ful engine could do but little more than turn its own 
wheels, and refused to do the required work. Not 
until the pressure had risen above one hundred 
pounds could the engine perform half the work which 
it could at one hundred and fifty pounds. And so 
with our mind. If it is meant to do its best work 
under a certain degree of concentration, it cannot 



attend. 



ATTENTION 15 

in a given time do half the work with half the atten- 
tion. Further, there will be much which it cannot 
do at all unless working under full pressure. We shall 
not be overstating the case if we say that as attention 
increases in arithmetical ratio, mental efficiency in- 
creases in geometrical ratio. It is in large measure a 
difference in the power of attention which makes one 
man a master in thought and achievement and another 
his humble follower. One often hears it said that 
'^ genius is but the- power of sustained attention,'' 
and this statement possesses a large element of truth. 

Some one has said that if our attention is properly How we 
trained we should be able '' to look at the point of a 
cambric needle for half an hour without winking.'^ 
But this is a false idea of attention. The ability to 
look at the point of a cambric needle for half an hour 
might indicate a very laudable power of concentra- 
tion; but the process, instead of enlightening us con- 
cerning the point of the needle, would result in our 
passing into an hypnotic state. The monks of Mount 
Athos had discovered the effect of long concentration 
on a single point, but misunderstood its import. They 
are said to have had an exercise in which each retired 
to his cell alone, drooped his head until the chin rested 
upon his breast, and solemnly '* contemplated the 
center of his abdomen." After a time the holy man 
saw '' a majestic and ethereal light." It is safe to 
say, however, that no additional light was thrown on 
the object of his contemplation. 

When we are attending strongly to one object of 
thought it does not mean that consciousness sits star- 
ing vacantly at this one object, but rather that it 
uses it as a central core of thought, and thinks into 
relation with this object the things which belong with 



16 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



it. In working out some mathematical solution the 
central core is the principle upon which the solution 
is based, and concentration in this case consists in 
thinking the various conditions of the problem in 
relation to this underlying principle. In the accom- 
panying diagram (Fig. 4) let J. be the central core 
of some object of thought, say a patch of cloud in a 




6. <. 



-^- 



Fig. 4. 



picture, and let a, h, c, d, etc., be the related facts, 
or the shape, size, color, etc., of the cloud. The arrows 
indicate the passing of our thought from cloud to 
related fact, or from related fact to cloud, and from 
related fact to related fact. As long as these related 
facts lead back to the cloud each time, that long we 
are attending to the cloud and thinking about it. It 
is when our thought fails to go back that we " wan- 
der " in our attention. Then we leave a, &, c, d, etc., 
which are related to the cloud, and, flying off to x, y, 
and z, finally bring up heaven knows where. 

The two chief types of inattention have already 
been mentioned. First, we may he thinking about 
the right things, but not thinking hard enough. We 
lack mental pressure. Outside thoughts which have 
no relation to the subject in hand may not trouble 
us much, but we do not attack our problem with vim. 
The current in our stream of consciousness is moving 



ATTENTION 17 

too slowly. "We do not gather up all our mental 
forces and mass them on the subject before us in a 
way that means victory. Our thoughts may be suf- 
ficiently focused, but they fail to '' set fire." It is 
like focusing the sun's rays while an eclipse is on. 
They lack energy. They will not kindle the paper 
after they have passed through the lens. This kind 
of attention means mental dawdling. It means in- 
efficiency. For the individual it means defeat in 
life's battles; for the nation it means mediocrity and 
stagnation. 

A college professor said to his faithful but poorly 
prepared class, '' Judging from your worn and tired 
appearance, young people, you are putting in twice 
too many hours on study." At this commendation 
the class brightened up visibly. '' But," he con- 
tinued, '* judging from your preparation, you do not 
study quite half hard enough. ' * 

Happy is the student who, starting in on his lesson 
rested and fresh, can study with such concentration 
that an hour of steady application will leave him 
mentally exhausted and limp. That is one hour of 
triumph for him, no matter what else he may have 
accomplished or failed to accomplish during the time. 
He can afford an occasional pause for rest, for dif- 
ficulties will melt rapidly away before him. He pos- 
sesses one key to successful achievement. 

Second, we may have good mental power and be Mental 
able to think hard and efficiently on any one point, ^^^ enng. 
but lack the power to think in a straight line. Every 
stray thought that comes along is a '' will-o'-the- 
wisp " to lead us away from the subject in hand 
and into lines of thought not related to it. Who has 
not started in to think on some problem, and, after a 



18 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

few moments, been surprised to find himself miles 
away from the topic upon which he started ! Or who 
has not read down a page and, turning to the next, 
found that he did not know a word on the preceding 
page, his thoughts having wandered away, his eyes 
only going through the process of reading! Instead 
of sticking to the a, h, c, d, etc., of our topic and re- 
lating them all up to A, thereby reaching a solution 
of the problem, we often jump at once to x, y, z, and 
find ourselves far afield with all possibility of a solu- 
tion gone. We may have brilliant thoughts about 
X, y, z; but they are not related to anything in par- 
ticular, and so they pass from us and are gone — lost 
in oblivion because they are not attached to some- 
thing permanent. 

Such a thinker is at the mercy of circumstances, 
following blindly the leadings of trains of thought 
which are his master instead of his servant, and 
which lead him anywhere or nowhere without let or 
hindrance from him. His consciousness moves rapidly 
enough and with enough force, but it is like a ship 
without a helm. Starting for the intellectual port 
A by way of a,h, c, d, he is mentally shipwrecked at 
last on the rocks x, y, z, and never reaches harbor. 
Fortunate is he who can shut out intruding thoughts 
and think in a straight line. Even with mediocre 
ability he may accomplish more by his thinking than 
the brilliant thinker who is constantly having his men- 
tal train wrecked by stray thoughts which slip in on 
his right of way. 

While attention is no doubt partly a natural gift, 
yet there is probably no power of the mind more sus- 
ceptible to training than is attention. And with at- 
tention, as with every other power of body and mind, 



ATTENTION 19 

the secret of its development lies in its use. Stated 
briefly, the only way to train attention is by attend- 
ing. No amount of theorizing or resolving can take 
the place of practice in the actual process of attending. 

Attention may be secured in three ways: Either Howat- 
(1) it is demanded by some sudden or intense sen- secured.^^ 
sory stimulus or insistent idea, or (2) it follows in- 
terest, or (3) it is compelled by the will. If it comes 
in the first way, as from a thunderclap or a flash of 
light, or from the persistent attempt of some un- 
sought idea to secure entrance into the mind, it is 
called involuntary attention. This form of attention 
is of so little importance, comparatively, in our men- 
tal life that we shall not discuss it further. 

If attention comes in the second way, following 
interest, it is called nonvoluntary or spontaneous at- 
tention ; if in the third, compelled by the will, volun- 
tary or active attention. Nonvoluntary attention has 
its motive in some object external to consciousness, or 
else follows a more or less uncontrolled current of 
thought which interests us; voluntary attention is 
controlled from within — we decide what we shall at- 
tend to instead of letting interesting objects of thought 
determine it for us. 

In nonvoluntary attention the environment largely Interest 
determines what we shall attend to. All that we toiuSt^ry 
have to do with directing this kind of attention is 
in developing certain lines of interest, and then the 
interesting things attract attention. The things we 
see and hear and touch and taste and smell, the 
things we like, the things we do and hope to do — 
these are the determining factors in our mental life so 
long as we are giving nonvoluntary attention. Our 
attention follows the beckoning of these things as the 
3 



attention. 



20 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Nonvolun- 
tary atten- 
tion takes 
the line 
of least 
resistance. 



needle the magnet. It is no effort to attend to them, 
but rather the effort would be to keep from attend- 
ing to them. Who does not remember reading a story, 
perhaps a forbidden one, so interesting that when 
mother called up the stairs for us to come down to 
attend to some duty, we replied, ' ' Yes, in a minute, ' ' 
and then went on reading! We simply could not 
stop at that place. The minute lengthens into ten, 
and another call startles us. ' ' Yes, I 'm coming ' ' ; 
we turn just one more leaf, and are lost again. At 
last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it 
cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, 
but open to the place where we left off, and where we 
hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful 
mystery. Was it an effort to attend to the reading? 
Ah, no ! it took the combined force of our will and of 
mother's authority to drag the attention away. This 
is nonvoluntary attention. 

Left to itself, then, attention simply obeys natural 
laws and follows the line of least resistance. By far 
the larger portion of our attention is of this type. 
Thought often runs on hour after hour when we are 
not conscious of effort or struggle to compel us to cease 
thinking about this thing and begin thinking about 
that. Indeed, it may be doubted whether this is not 
the case with some persons for days at a time, instead 
of hours. The things that present themselves to the 
mind are the things which occupy it ; the character of 
the thought is determined by the character of our 
interests. It is this fact which makes it so vitally 
necessary that our interests shall be broad and pure 
if our thoughts are to be of this type. It is not 
enough that we have the strength to drive from our 
minds a wrong or impure thought which seeks en- 



ATTENTION 



21 



trance. To stand guard as a policeman over our 
thoughts to see that no unworthy one enters, requires 
too much time and energy. Our interests must be of 
such a nature as to lead us away from the field of un- 
worthy thoughts if we are to be free from their 
tyranny. 
-^ In voluntary attention there is a conflict either The will 
between the will and interest or between the will and trryltten- 
the mental inertia or laziness which has to be over- ^^°'^- 
come before we can think with any degree of con- 
centration. ^ Interest says, ' ' Follow this line, which 
is easy and attractive, or which requires but little 
effort — follow the line of least resistance. ' ' Will says, 
** Quit that line of dalliance and ease, and take this 
harder way which I direct — cease the line of least 
resistance and take the one of greatest resistance. ' * 
When day dreams and '' castles in Spain " attempt 
to lure you from your lessons, refuse to follow; shut 
out these vagabond thoughts and stick to your task. 
When intellectual inertia deadens your thought and 
clogs your mental stream, throw it off and court force- 
ful effort. If wrong or impure thoughts seek entrance 
to your mind, close and lock your mental doors to 
them. If thoughts of desire try to drive out thoughts 
of duty, be heroic and insist that thoughts of duty 
shall have right of way. In short, be you the master 
of your thinking, and do not let it always be directed 
without your consent by influences outside of your- 
self. 

It is just at this point that the strong will wins Value of 
victory and the weak will breaks down. Between the to contlJoi 
ability to control one's thoiights and the inability to attention, 
control them lies all the difference between right ac- 
tions and wrong actions ; between withstanding temp- 



22 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

tation and yielding to it ; between an inefficient, pur- 
poseless life and a life of purpose and endeavor; 
between success and failure. For we act in accord- 
ance with those things which our thought rests upon. 
Suppose two lines of thought represented by A and B, 
respectively, lie before you; that A leads to a course 
of action difficult or unpleasant, but necessary to suc- 
cess or duty, and that B leads to a course of action 
easy or pleasant, but fatal to success or duty. Which 
course will you follow — the rugged path of duty or 
the easier one of pleasure? The answer depends 
almost wholly, if not entirely, on your power of atten- 
tion. If your will is strong enough to pull your 
thoughts away from the fatal but attractive B and 
hold them resolutely on the less attractive A, then A 
will dictate your course of action, and you will re- 
spond to the call for endeavor, self-denial, and duty; 
but if your thoughts break away from the domination 
of your will and follow the beckoning of your inter- 
ests alone, then B will dictate your course of action, 
and you will follow the leading of ease and pleasure. 
For our actions are finally and irrevocably dictated 
by the things we think about. 
Not really It is not to be Understood, however, from what has 
kindro/ been said, that there are really different kinds of at- 
attention. tcntiou. "^ All attention denotes an active or dynamic 
phase of consciousness. The difference is rather in 
the way we secure attention; whether it is demanded 
by sudden stimulus, coaxed from us by interesting 
objects of thought without effort on our part, or com- 
pelled by force of will to desert the more interesting 
and take the direction which we dictate. 

A very close relationship and interdependence exists 
between nonvoluntary and voluntary attention. It 



ATTENTION 23 

would be impossible to hold our attention by sheer interreia- 
force of will on objects which were forever devoid of forms^of 
interest; likewise the blind following of our interests attention, 
and desires would finally lead to shipwreck in all our 
lives. Each kind of attention must support and reen- 
f orce the other. The lessons, the sermons, the lectures, 
and the books in which we are most interested, and 
hence to which we attend nonvoluntarily and with 
the least effort and fatigue, are the ones out of which, 
other things being equal, we get the most and remem- 
ber the best and longest. On the other hand, there 
are sometimes lessons and lectures and books, and 
many things besides, which are not intensely inter- 
esting, but which should be attended to nevertheless. 
It is at this point that the will must step in and take 
command. If it has not the strength to do this, it 
is in so far a weak will, and steps should be taken 
to develop it. We are to '' keep the faculty of effort 
alive in us by a little gratuitous exercise every day.'* 
We are to be systematically heroic in the little points 
of everyday life and experience. We are not to 
shrink from tasks because they are difficult or un- 
pleasant. Then, when the test comes, we shall not 
find ourselves unnerved and untrained, but shall be 
able to stand in the evil day. 

Finally, one of the chief things in training the The habit 
attention is to form the habit of attending. This tion. ^^' 
habit is to be formed only by attending whenever 
and wherever the proper thing to do is to attend, 
whether '' in work, in play, in making fishing flies, 
in preparing for an examination, in courting a sweet- 
heart, in reading a book. ' ' The lesson, or the sermon, 
or the lecture, may not be very interesting; but if 
they are to be attended to at all, our rule should be 



24 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

to attend to them completely and absolutely. Not by 
fits and starts, now drifting away and now jerking our- 
selves back, but all the time. And, furthermore, the 
one who will deliberately do this will often find the 
dull and uninteresting task become more interesting; 
but if it never becomes interesting, he is at least form- 
ing a habit which will be invaluable to him through 
life. On the other hand, the one who fails to attend 
except when his interest is captured, who never exerts 
effort to compel attention, is forming a habit which 
will be the bane of his thinking until his stream of 
thought shall end. 

EXERCISES 

Look in upon your thought occasionally and discover 
what constitutes the "wave." 

Did your attention follow your interest, or was it com- 
pelled by your will? Which type of attention can you sus- 
tain the longer? 

Which gives you the better immediate results? 

If you find it impossible to hold your mind down to study, 
where does the difficulty lie? 

Is it possible that some things may be uninteresting to us 
only because we do not know enough about them? 

Are you improving in your power of attention? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Angell, "Psychology," Chapter IV. 

James, "Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XIII. 

James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XI. 

Sully, "The Human Mind," vol. i., pp. 74-79. 

Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter IV, sec. 5. 

Stout, "The Groundwork of Psychology," Chapter VI. 

Royce, "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 257-268. 

Oppenheim, "Mental Growth and Control," Chapter III. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 

A FINE brain, or a good mind. These terms are Mind and 
often used interchangeably, as if they were synono- 
mous. Yet the one stands for a material thing — ^so 
many cells and fibers combined in a soft, pulpy mass 
of gray and white, weighing some three pounds, and 
shut away from the outside world in a closed casket 
of bone; the other stands for a spiritual thing — for 
the sum of the processes by which we think and feel 
and will, and which have made man the master of 
his environment and given him the magnificent sum 
total of human culture and attainment. How, then, 
came these so widely different facts, the mind and the 
brain, ever to be confused in our speech ? How came 
we to use the terms interchangeably? It is because 
the mind and the brain are so vitally related and so 
inseparably connected in their work. We have never 
known a mind except in connection with some brain, 
and a brain without a mind becomes but a mass of 
dead matter, of no more value than so much clay. 
Each has grown up and developed into its present 
state of efficiency by working in conjunction with the 
other, not only in each individual from birth to matu- 
rity, but also in the race, through the countless ages of 
its history. The brain of the babe is as much inferior 
to that of the adult as its mind is below the adult 
mind; likewise the same law holds if we compare 
primitive men with civilized. 

25 



26 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



In the first chapter we saw that the brain does not 
create the mind, but that the mind works through the 
brain. No one can believe that the brain secretes 
mind as the liver secretes bile, or that it grinds it 
out as a mill does flour. Indeed, just what their exact 
relation is has not yet been settled. Yet it is easy 
to see that if the mind must use the brain as a machine 
and work through it, then the mind must be subject 
to the limitations of its machine, or, in other words, 
the mind cannot be better than the brain through 
which it operates. A brain and nervous system that 
are poorly developed or insufficiently nourished mean 
a low grade of efficiency in our mental processes, just 
as a poorly constructed or wrongly adjusted motor 
means loss of power in applying the electric current 
to its work. We will, then, look upon the mind and 
the brain as counterparts of each other, each perform- 
ing activities which correspond to activities in the 
other, both inextricably bound together at least so far 
as this life is concerned, and each getting its signifi- 
cance by its union with the other. This view will lend 
interest to a brief study of the brain and nervous 
system. 

But can we first see how in a general way the brain 
and nervous system are primarily related to our think- 
ing? Let us go back to the beginning and consider 
the babe when it first opens its eyes on the scenes of its 
new existence. What is in its mind ? What does it 
think about ? Nothing. Imagine, if you can, a per- 
son born blind and deaf, and without the sense of 
touch, taste, or smell. Let such a person live on for 
a year, for five years, for a lifetime. What would he 
know? What ray of intelligence would enter his 
mind ? What would he think about ? All would be 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 



27 



dark to his eyes, all silent to his ears, all tasteless to 
his mouth, all odorless to his nostrils, all touehless to 
his skin! His mind would be a blank. He would 
have no mind. He could not get started to think. He 
could not get started to act. He would belong to a 
lower scale of life than the tiny animal that floats with 
the waves and the tide in the ocean without power to 
direct its own course. He would be but an inert mass 
of flesh without sense or soul. 

Yet this is the condition of the babe at birth. It is 
born blind and deaf, without the sense of temperature, 
taste, or smell. Born without anything to think 
about, and no way to get anything to think about until 
the senses wake up and furnish some material from 
the outside world. Born with all the mechanism of 
muscle and nerve ready to perform the countless com- 
plex movements of arms and legs and body which 
characterize every child, he could not even start on 
these activities without a message from the senses to 
set them going. At Tbirth the child probably has only 
the senses of contact and temperature present; taste 
soon follows; sight in a few days; hearing about the 
same time, and smell a little later. The senses are 
waking up and beginning their acquaintance with the 
outside world. 

And what a problem the senses have to solve ! On 
the one hand the great universe of sights and sounds, 
of tastes and smells, of contacts and temperatures, and 
whatever else may belong to the material world in 
which we live; and on the other hand the little 
shapeless mass of gray and white pulpy matter in- 
capable of sustaining its own shape, and shut away 
in the darkness of a bony case with no possibility of 
contact with the outside world, and no means of com- 



The mind 
at birth. 



The work 
of the 



28 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



municating with it except through the senses. And 
yet this universe of external things must be brought 
into communication with the seemingly insignificant 
but really wonderful thing we call the brain, else the 
mind could never be. Here we discover, then, the two 




Fig. 5.=A neuron from a human spinal cord. The central portion 
represents the cell body; N, the nucleus; P, a pigmented or 
colored spot; D, a dendrite, or relatively short fiber, which 
branches freely; A, an axon, or long fiber, which branches but 
little. 



great factors which first require our study if we would 
understand the growth of the mind — the material 
world witJwut and the train within. For it is the 
action and interaction of these which lie at the bot- 
tom of the mind 's development. Let us first look a lit- 
tle more closely at the brain and the accompanying 
nervous system. 

The nervous system, including the brain, is made up 
of nerve cells and their outgrowing fibers. Each sep- 
arate cell body, with its filamentous elongations, is 
called a neuron. The cell may be thought of as the 
original or fundamental part of the neuron, for the 
fibers are in all cases formed by an outgrowth from 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 29 

cells. The cells are of various shapes, gray in color, 
and are found for the most part in the brain and 
spinal cord, and little masses of them called ganglia 
are found distributed at intervals along the nerves 
which lead to the periphery of the body. The cells 
form that part of the brain and cord usually called 
the * ' gray matter. ' ' They vary from ^^ to ytuif 
of an inch in diameter. In man's brain and spinal 
cord alone there are some three thousand millions of 
neurons. 

Like the battery cells in an electrical apparatus, the Nerve cells 
nerve cells are generators of energy, supplying the 
force which governs our movements, interprets our 



and fibers. 




Fig, 6. — Neurons in different stages of development, from a to e. In 
a, the elementary cell body alone is present; in c, a dendrite is 
shown projecting upward, and an axone downward. — After 
Donaldson. 



sensations, and does our thinking ; for these things re- 
quire the expenditure of energy quite as much as does 
the running of wheels and pulleys or the lifting of 
weights. The fibers, which, as said above, are but elon- 
gations of the cells, are, like the wires in an electrical 



30 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

apparatus, the conductors of energy. They carry the 
force supplied by the cells, serving to connect the dif- 
ferent parts of the nervous system with each other 
functionally so that they may work in harmony. 
They bear the messages from the outside world to the 
brain and spinal cord, and finally connect all with the 
muscles, thus making possible the harmonious move- 




FiG. 7. — Longitudinal (A) and transverse (B) sections of nerve 
fibers. The heavy border represents the medullary, or envelop- 
ing, sheath, which becomes thicker in the larger fibers. Sciatic 
nerve. Human X 400 diameters. — After Donaldson. 



ments of the body. Something may be guessed of the 
number and size of the fibers from the fact that more 
than two and a half millions of sensory fibers alone 
terminate in the brain. 

The nervous system may, for the purpose of descrip- 
tion, conveniently be divided into two parts: (1) The 
central nervous system, consisting of the brain and 
spinal cord, and (2) the peripheral system, consisting 
of the afferent or in-bearing and efferent or out-bear- 
ing branches which connect the central system with 
the periphery of the body. A brief description of 
each of these parts will help us to understand better 
how they all work together in so wonderful a way to 
accomplish their great result. 

The spinal cord proceeds from the base of the brain 
downward about eighteen inches through a canal pro- 
vided for it in the vertebrae of the spinal column. It 
is composed of white matter, or fibers, on the outside, 
and gray matter, or cells, within. A deep fissure on 




Fig. 8. — Different aspects of sections of the spinal cord and of the 
roots of the spinal nerves from the cervical region: 1, different 
views of anterior median fissure; 2, posterior fissure; 3, anterior 
lateral depression for anterior roots; k, posterior lateral depres- 
sion for posterior roots; 5 and 6, anterior and posterior roots, 
respectively; 7, complete spinal nerve, formed by the union of 
the anterior and posterior roots. 

white is passing inward, where it is found in the cere- 
brum. Here also the fibers are crossing or changing 
sides, so that those which pass up the right side of the 
cord finally connect with the left side of the brain. 



brain. 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 31 

the anterior side and another on the posterior cleave 
the cord nearly in twain, resembling the brain in this 
particular. The gray matter on the interior is in the 
form of two crescents connected by a narrow bar. 

In the brain we easily distinguish three major divi- The 
sions — the medulla oblongata,. the cerebellum, and the 
cerebrum. The medulla is but an enlargement of the 
upper part of the cord where it connects with the 
brain. It is about an inch and a quarter long, and is 
composed of both white and gray matter, but not 
regularly arranged as in the cord. For here the gray, 
which is on the inside in the cord, is passing to the 
outside, which is its location in the cerebrum ; and the 



32 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Lying just back of the medulla and at the rear part 
of the base of the cerebrum is the cerebellum, or 
' ' little brain, ' ' approximately as large as the fist, and 
composed of a complex arrangement of white and 
gray matter. Fibers from the spinal cord enter this 




Fig. 9. — View of the under side of the brain. B, basis of the crura; 
P, pons; Mo, medulla oblongata; Ce, cerebellum; Sc, spinal cord. 

mass, and others emerge and pass on into the cere- 
brum, while its two halves also are connected with 
each other by means of cross fibers. 

The cerebrum occupies all the upper part of the 
skull from the front to the rear. It is divided sym- 
metrically into two hemispheres, the right and the left. 
These hemispheres are connected with each other by a 
small bridge of fibers called the corpiis callosum. Each 
hemisphere is furrowed and ridged with convolutions, 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 



33 



an arrangement which allows greater surface for the 
distribution of the gray cellular matter over it. Be- 
sides these irregularities of surface, each hemisphere 
is marked also by two deep clefts or fissiires — ^the fis- 
sure of Rolando, extending from the middle upper 
part of the hemisphere downward and forward, 
passing a little in front of the ear and stopping on a 
level with the upper part of it ; and the fissure of Syl- 
vius, beginning at the base of the brain somewhat in 




Fig. 10. — Diagrammatic side view of brain, showing cerebellum (CB) 
and medulla oblongata (MO). F' F" F'^' are placed on the first, 
second, and third frontal convolutions; AF, on the ascending 
frontal; AP, on the ascending parietal; M, on the marginal; A, 
on the angular. T' T" T'" are placed on the first, second, and 
third temporal convolutions. R-R marks the fissure of Rolando; 
S>-S, the fissure of Sylvius; PO, the parieto-occipitai fissure.—: 
After Angell. 



front of the ear and extending upward and back- 
ward at an acute angle with the base of the hemi- 
sphere. 

The surface of each hemisphere may be thought of 
as mapped out into four lobes: The frontal lobe, which 



84 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



includes the front part of the hemisphere and extends 
back to the fissure of Eolando and down to the fissure 
of Sylvius; the parietal lobe, which lies back of the 
fissure of Rolando and above that of Sylvius and ex- 



€enff 




Fig. 11. — The projection fibers of the brain, 
pairs of cranial nerves. 



I-IX, the first nine 



tends back to the occipital lobe; the occipital lobe, 
which includes the extreme rear portion of the hemi- 
sphere; and the temporal lobe, which lies below the 
fissure of Sylvius and extends back to the occipital lobe. 
The gray or cellular matter in the hemispheres, un- 
like that in the cord, lies on the surface. This rind 
of gray matter is called the cortex, and it varies from 
one-twelfth to one-eighth of an inch in thickness. 
(See Figs. 11 and 12.) The greater part of the mass 
of the hemispheres is formed by the white matter or 
fibers. 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 35 

These fibers are of three kinds: (1) Projection The 
fibers, which are the fibers from the spinal cord and ^'^* 
which spread out fanlike to all parts of the hemi- 
spheres, bringing sensory impulses in and carrying 
motor impulses back to the muscles; (2) association 
fibers, which connect the different convolutions of the 
same hemisphere with each other, and thus make it 
possible for the different senses to work together, as 
when some object we see calls up in the mind a sound, 
or taste, or smell, or touch which was at a former time 
associated with it; and (3) commissural fibers, which 
connect the corresponding parts of the two hemi- 
spheres with each other, and thus make it possible for 
the two sides of the body to work in harmony. 




Fig. 12. — Schematic diagram showing association fibers connecting 
cortical centers with each other. — After James and Starr. 



The peripheral nervous system consists of thirty- Thepe- 
one pairs of nerves branching off from the spinal system^ 
cord, a sensory nerve root from the posterior and a 
motor from the anterior part of the cord at the same 
4 



organs. 



36 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

level. (See Fig. 8.) Soon after their emergence from 
the cord, these nerves are wrapped together in the 
same sheath and proceed in this way to the periphery 
of the body, where the sensory nerve usually ends in 
a specialized end organ fitted to respond to some cer- 
tain stimulus from the outside world. The motor 
nerve ends in minute filaments in the muscular organ 
which it governs. Both sensory and motor nerves con- 
nect with fibers of like kind in the cord and these in 
turn with the cortex, thus giving every part of the 
periphery direct connection with the cortex. Twelve 
pairs of nerves arise from the brain itself, and extend 
either to the periphery of the body or else to certain 
of the visceral organs. 
The end The end organs of the sensory nerves are all alike in 

one particular : namely, that each is fitted for its own 
particular work, and can do no other. Thus the eye is 
the end organ of sight, and is a wonderfully complex 
arrangement of nerve structure combined with re- 
fracting media, and arranged to respond to the rapid 
ether waves of light. The ear has for its essential 
part the specialized endings of the auditory nerve, 
and is fitted to respond to the waves carried to it in 
the air, giving the sensation of sound. The end organs 
of touch, found in greatest perfection in the finger 
tips, are of several kinds, all very complicated in 
structure. And so on with each of the senses. Each 
has some form of end organ specially adapted to re- 
spond to the kind of stimulus upon which its sensation 
depends, and each is insensible to the stimuli of the 
others, much as the receiver of a telephone will re- 
spond to the tones of our voice, but not to the touch 
of our fingers as will the telegraph instrument, and 
vice versa. Thus the eye is not affected by sounds, nor 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 37 

touch by light ; yet by the means of all the senses we 
are able to come in contact with the material world in 
a variety of ways. 

Division of labor is the law in the organic world as Division of 
in the industrial. Animals of the lowest type, such as the°nerv- 
the amoeba, do not have separate organs for respira- ^^^^^^" 
tion, digestion, assimilation, elimination, etc., the one 
tissue performing all of these functions. But in the 
higher forms each organ not only has its own specific 
work, but even within the same organ each part has 
its own particular work assigned. Thus we have seen 
that the two parts of the neuron perform different 
functions, the cells generating energy and the fibers 
transmitting it. It will not seem strange, then, that 
there is also a division of labor in the cellular matter 
itself in the nervous system. For example, the little 
masses of ganglia which are distributed at intervals 
along the nerves are probably for the purpose of reen- 
forcing the nerve current, much as the battery cells 
in the local telegraph office reenf orce the current from 
the central office; the cellular matter in the spinal 
cord and lower parts of the brain has a very impor- 
tant work to perform in receiving messages from the 
senses and responding to them in directing the simpler 
reflex acts and movements which we learn to execute 
without our consciousness being called upon, thus 
leaving the mind free from these petty things to busy 
itself in higher ways; the cellular matter of the cor- 
tex performs the highest functions of all, for through 
its activity we have consciousness — ^thought, feeling, 
and will. The gray matter of the cerebellum, the me- 
dulla, and the cord may receive impressions from the 
senses and respond to them with movements, but their 
response is in all cases wholly automatic and uncon- 



38 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



scious. A person whose hemispheres had been injured 
in such a way as to interfere with the activity of the 
cortex might still continue to perform most if not 
all of the habitual movements of his life, but they 
would be mechanical and not intelligent. He would 
lack all higher consciousness. It is through the activ- 

Li7ie indicates fissure 
of Jiolando 




Occipital 
lobe 



Fissure of 
Sylvius 



Temporal 
lobe 



Fig. 13. 



-Side view of left hemisphere of human brain, showing the 
principal localized areas. 



Division of 
labor in 
the cortex. 



ity of this thin covering of cellular matter of the 
cerebrum that our minds operate; here are received 
stimuli from the different senses, and here sensations 
are experienced. Here all our movements which are 
consciously directed have their origin. And here all 
our thinking, feeling, and willing are done. 

Nor does the division of labor in the nervous sys- 
tem end with this assignment of work. The cortex 
itself probably works essentially as a unit, yet it is 
through a shifting of tensions from one area to an- 
other tha^ it acts, now giving us a sensation, now di- 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 39 

recting a movement, and now thinking a thought or 
feeling an emotion. Localization of function is the 
rule here also. Certain areas of the cortex are de- 
voted chiefly to sensations, others to motor impulses, 
and others to higher thought activities, yet in such a 
way that all work together in perfect harmony, each 
reenforcing the other and making its work significant. 
Thus the front portion of the cortex seems to be de- 
voted to the higher thought activities; the region on 
both sides of the fissure of Rolando, to motor activ- 
ities; and the rear and lower parts to sensory activ- 
ities; and all are bound together and made to work 
together by the association fibers of the brain. 

In the case of the higher thought activities, it is not 
probable that one section of the frontal lobes of the 
cortex is set apart for thinking, one for feeling, and 
one for willing, etc., but rather that the whole fron- 
tal part of the cortex is concerned in each. In the 
motor and sensory areas, however, the case is dif- 
ferent; for here a still further division of labor 
occurs. For example, in the motor region one small 
area seems connected with movements of the head, 
one with the arm, one with the leg, one with the 
face, and another with the organs of speech ; likewise 
in the sensory region, one area is devoted to vision, 
one to hearing, one to taste and smell, and one to 
touch, etc. We must bear in mind, however, that 
these regions are not mapped out as accurately as are 
the boundaries of our States — that no part of the brain 
is restricted wholly to either sensory or motor nerves, 
and that no part works by itself independently of the 
rest of the brain. We name a tract from the predomi- 
nance of nerves which end there, or from the chief 
functions which the area performs. The motor locali- 



40 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The nerv- 
ous sys- 
tem and 
the outside 
world. 



The end 
organs and 
their re- 
sponse to 
stimuli. 



zation seems to be the most perfect. Indeed, experi- 
mentation on the brains of monkeys has been success- 
ful in mapping out motor areas so accurately that 
such small centers as those connected with the bend- 
ing of one particular leg or the flexing of a thumb 
have been located. Yet each area of the cortex is so 
connected with every other area by the millions of 
association fibers that the whole brain is capable of 
working together as a unit, thus unifying and har- 
monizing our thoughts, emotions, and acts. 

Let us next inquire how this mechanism of the nerv- 
ous system is acted upon in such a way as to give us 
sensations. In order to understand this, we must first 
know that all forms of matter are composed of minute 
atoms which are in constant motion, and by impart- 
ing this motion to the air or the ether which surrounds 
them, are constantly radiating energy in the form of 
minute waves throughout space. These waves, or radi- 
ations, are incredibly rapid in some instances and 
rather slow in others. In sending out its energy in the 
form of these waves, the physical world is doing its 
part to permit us to form its acquaintance. The end 
organs of the sensory nerves must meet this advance 
halfway, and be so constructed as to be affected by 
the different forms of energy which are constantly 
beating upon them. 

Thus the radiations of ether from the sun, our chief 
source of light, are so rapid that billions of them 
enter the eye in a second of time, and the retina is of 
such a nature that its nerve cells are thrown into ac- 
tivity by these waves ; the impulse is carried over the 
optic nerve to the occipital lobe of the cortex, and the 
sensation of sight is the result. The different colors 
also, from the red of the spectrum to the violet, are 



THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM 



41 



the result of different vibration rates in the waves of 
ether which strike the retina ; and in order to perceive 
color, the retina must be able to respond to the par- 
ticular vibration rate which represents each color. 
Likewise in the sense of touch the end organs are 
fitted to respond to very rapid vibrations, and it is 



AComfjosife 

Beam of 
E^her waves 




Vibrations 
of 400 
and less ; 
450 Red 
472 Orange 
526 Yellow 
589 Green 
640 Blue 
722 Indigo 
780 Violet 
VibraMons 

of 800 
and more 



Ul Ira Red Rays 

Temperature 

<5timuli 



Ligtit Rays 

► Ctiemical 

3limuli 



UllraVioletRays 
Chemical 
Stimuli 



Fig. 14. — The prism's analysis of a bundle of light rays. On the 
right are shown the relation of vibration rates to temperature 
stimuli, to light, and to chemical stimuli. The rates are in bil- 
lions per second. — After Wither. 



possible that the different qualities of touch are pro- 
duced by different vibration rates in the atoms of the 
object we are touching. When we reach the ear, we 
have the organ which responds to the lowest vibration 
rate of all, for we can detect a sound made by an ob- 
ject which is vibrating from twenty to thirty times a 
second. The highest vibration rate which will affect 
the ear is some forty or fifty thousand per second. 
Thus it is seen that there are great gaps in the dif- 
ferent rates to which our senses are fitted to respond 
— a sudden drop from billions in the case of the eye 
to millions in touch, and to thousands or even tens 



42 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



in hearing. This makes one wonder whether there 
are not many things in nature which man has never 
discovered simply because he has not the sense mech- 
anism enabling him to become conscious of their exist- 
ence. There are undoubtedly more things in heaven 
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. 

Only as the senses bring in the material, has the 
mind anything with which to build. Thus have the 
senses to act as messengers between the great outside 
world and the brain; to be the servants who shall 
stand at the doorways of the body — the eyes, the ears, 
the finger tips — ready to receive each its particular 
kind of impulse from nature and send it along the 
right path to the part of the cortex where it belongs, 
so that the mind can say, "A sight," ''A sound," or 
*'A touch." Thus does the mind come to know the 
universe of the senses. Thus does it get the material 
out of which memory, imagination, and thought begin. 
Thus and only thus does the mind secure the crude 
material from which the finished superstructure is 
finally built. 



SUGGESTED READINGS 

Halleck, " Education of the Central Nervous System," 
Chapter I. 

Baldwin, " The Story of the Mind," Chapter V. 
Royce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chapter III. 
Thorndike, " Elements of Psychology," Chapters IX-XI. 
Stout, " Groundwork of Psychology," Chapter IV. 
James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter VIII. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapter II. 



CHAPTER IV 
SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 

Education was long looked upon as affecting the Education 
mind only. If what we have been saying about the boSimind 
dependence of the mind on the nervous system is true, ^^^ body, 
however, it is evident that the mind cannot be trained 
except as the nervous system is trained and developed. 
For not sensation and movement alone, but memory, 
imagination, judgment, reasoning, and every other act 
of the mind, are dependent on the nervous system 
finally for their efficiency. The mind and the nervous 
system are so wedded in their growth and develop- 
ment, as well as in their activities, that it is impossible 
to educate the one without performing a like office for 
the other; and it is likewise impossible to neglect the 
one without causing the other to suffer. 

Ignoring the native differences in nervous systems Efficiency 
through the influence of heredity, the efficiency of a system dT- 
nervous system is largely dependent on two factors : §g^ J^^^ 
(l)The development of the cells and fibers of which mentand 
it is composed, and (2) its general tone of health and 
vigor. The actual number of cells in the nervous sys- 
tem increases but little if at all after birth. Indeed, 
it is doubtful whether Edison 's brain and nervous sys- 
tem has a greater number of cells in it than yours or 
mine. The difference between the brain of a genius 
and that of an ordinary man is not in the number of 
cells which it contains, but rather in the development 

43 



44 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

of the cells and fibers which are present, potentially, 
at least, in every nervous system. The histologist tells 
us that in the nervous system of every child there are 
tens of thousands of cells which are so immature and 
undeveloped that they are useless; indeed, this is the 
case to some degree in every adult person's nervous 
system as well. Thus each individual has inherent in 
his nervous system potentialities of which he has never 
taken advantage, the utilizing of which may make him 
a genius and the neglecting of which will certainly 
leave him on the plane of mediocrity. The first prob- 
lem in education, then, is to take the unripe and ineffi- 
cient nervous systems, and so develop them in connec- 
tion with the growing mind that the possibilities 
which nature has stored in them shall become actu- 
alities. 

Professor Donaldson tells us on this point that: 
''At birth, and for a long time after, many (nervous) 
systems contain cell elements which are more or less 
immature, not forming a functional part of the tissue, 
and yet under some conditions capable of further de- 
velopment. . . . For the cells which are continually 
appearing in the developing cortex no other source 
is known than the nuclei or granules found there in 
its earliest stages. These elements are metamorphosed 
neuroblasts — ^that is, elementary cells out of which the 
nervous matter is developed — which have shrunken to 
a volume less than that which they had at first, and 
which remain small until, in the subsequent process of 
enlargement necessary for their full development, they 
expand into well-marked cells. Elements intermediate 
between these granules and the fully developed cells 
are always found, even in mature brains, and therefore 
it is inferred that the latter are derived from the for- 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 45 

mer. The appearances there also lead to the conclu- 
sions that many elements which might possibly de- 
velop in any given case is far beyond the number that 
actually does so. . . , The possible number of cells 
latent and functional in the central system is early 
fixed. At any age this number is accordingly repre- 
sented by the granules as well as by the cells which 
have already undergone further development. During 
growth the proportion of developed cells increases, 
and sometimes, owing to the failure to recognize po- 
tential nerve cells in the granules, the impression is 
carried away that this increase implies the formation 
of new elements. As has been shown, such is not the 
case. ' ' ^ 

The nerve fibers, no less than the cells, must go Develop- 
through a process of development. It has already ^erve° 
been shown that the fibers are the result of a branch- fibers, 
ing of cells. At birth many of the cells have not yet 
thrown out branches, and hence the fibers are lack- 
ing ; while many of those which are already grown out 
are not sufficiently developed to transmit impulses 
accurately. Thus it has been found that most chil- 
dren at birth are able to support the weight of the 
body for several seconds by clasping the fingers 
around a small rod, but it takes about a year for the 
child to become able to stand. It is evident that it 
requires more actual strength to cling to a rod than to 
stand ; hence the conclusion is that the difference is in 
the earlier development of the nerve centers which 
have to do with clasping than of those concerned in 
standing. Likewise the child's first attempts to feed 
himself or do any one of the thousand little things 
about which he is so awkward, are partial failures not 
» Donaldson, " The Growth of the Brain," pp. 74, 238. 



46 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



so much because he has not had practice as because 
his nervous machinery connected with those move- 
ments is not yet developed sufficiently to enable him to 
be accurate. His brain is in a condition which Flech- 
sig calls " imripe." How, then, shall the nervous 
system ripen? How shall the undeveloped cells and 
fibers grow to full maturity and efficiency? 

Like all other tissues of the body, the nerve cells and 
fibers are developed by judicious use. The sensory cells 
require the constant stimulus of nerve currents run- 
ning in from the various end organs, and the motor 
cells require the constant stimulus of currents run- 
ning from them out to the muscles. In other words, 
the conditions upon which both motor and sensory 
development depend are: (1) A rich environment of 
sights and sounds and tastes and smells, and every- 
thing else which serves as proper stimuli to the sense 
organs; and (2) no less important, an opportunity for 
the freest and most complete motor activity. An illus- 
tration of the effects of the lack of sensory stimuli on 
the cortex is well shown in the case of Laura Bridg- 
man, whose brain was studied by Professor Donaldson 
after her death. Laura Bridgman was born a normal 
child, and developed as other children do up to the 
age of nearly three years. At this time, through an 
attack of scarlet fever, she lost her hearing completely 
and also the sight of her left eye. Her right eye was 
so badly affected that she could see but little ; and it, 
too, became entirely blind when she was eight. She 
lived in this condition until she was sixty years old, 
when she died. Professor Donaldson submitted the 
cortex of her brain to a most careful examination, 
also comparing the corresponding areas on the two 
hemispheres with each other. He found that as a 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 47 

whole the cortex was thinner than in the case of nor- 
mal individuals. He found also that the cortical area 
connected with the left eye — namely, the right occip- 
ital region — was much thinner than that for the 
right eye, which had retained its sight longer than the 
other. He says: "It is interesting to notice that 
those parts of the cortex which, according to the cur- 
rent view, were associated with the defective sense or- 
gans were also particularly thin. The cause of this 
thinness was found to be due, at least in part, to the 
small size of the nerve cells there present. Not only 
were the large and medium-sized cells smaller, but the 
impression made on the observer was that they were 
also less numerous than in the normal cortex. ' ' 

No doubt if we could examine the brain of a per- Effect of 
son who has grown up in an environment rich in stimiSf. 
stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have 
presented a changing panorama of color and form to 
attract the eye ; where all the sounds of nature, from 
the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the 
murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of 
the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, 
have challenged the ear ; where many and varied odors 
and perfumes have assailed the nostrils ; where a great 
range of tastes have tempted the palate ; where many 
varieties of touch and temperature sensations have 
been experienced — no doubt if we could examine such 
a brain we should find the sensory areas of the cortex 
excelling in thickness because its cells were well de- 
veloped and full sized from the currents which had 
been pouring into them from the outside world. On 
the other hand, if we could examine a cortex which 
had lacked any one of these stimuli, we should find 
some area in it undeveloped because of this deficiency. 



48 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Its owner would therefore possess but the fraction of 
a brain, and would in a corresponding degree find his 
mind incomplete. 

Likewise in the case of the motor areas. Pity the 
boy or the girl who has been deprived of the oppor- 
tunity to use every muscle to the fullest extent in the 
unrestricted plays and games of childhood. For 



L^ t^^ 




Fig. 15. — Schematic transverse section of the human brain showing 
the projection of the motor fibers, their crossing in the neighbor- 
hood of the medulla, and their termination in the different areas 
of localized function in the cortex. S, fissure of Sylvius; M, the 
medulla; VII, the roots of the facial nerves. — After Angell. 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 49 

where such activities are not wide in their scope, there 
some areas of the cortex will remain undeveloped, be- 
cause unused, and the person will be handicapped 
later in his life from lack of skill in the activities de- 
pending on these centers. Halleck says in this con- 
nection : " If we could examine the developing motor 
region with a microscope of sufficient magnifying 
power, it is conceivable that we might learn wherein 
the modification due to exercise consists. We might 
also, under such conditions, be able to say, ' This is the 
motor region of a piano player ; the modifications here 
correspond precisely to those necessary for controlling 
such movements of the hand. ' Or, ' This is the motor 
tract of a blacksmith ; this, of an engraver ; and these 
must be the cells which govern the vocal organs of an 
orator.' " Whether or not the microscope will ever 
reveal such things to us, there is no doubt that the 
conditions suggested exist, and that back of every in- 
efficient and awkward attempt at physical control lies 
a motor area with its cells undeveloped by use. No 
wonder that our processes of learning physical ad- 
justment and control are slow, for they are a growth 
in the brain rather than a simple '' learning how." 

The training of the nervous system consists finally. Coordinate 
then, in the development of the neurons of which Ind^motor 
it is composed. We have seen that the sensory cells ^^e^^^*^^" 
are to be developed by the sensory stimuli pouring 
in upon them, and the motor cells by the motor im- 
pulses which they send out to the muscles. The sen- 
sory and the motor fibers likewise, being an outgrowth 
of their respective cells, find their development in 
carrying the impulses which result in sensation and 
movement. Thus it is seen that the neuron is, in its 
development as in its work, a unit. 



50 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Develop- 
ment from 
thought 
processes. 



Illustration 
of simple 
sensory- 
motor 
action. 



To this simpler type of sensory and motor develop- 
ment which we have been considering, we must add 
that which comes from the more complex mental proc- 
esses, such as memory, thought, and imagination. 
For it is in connection with these that the association 
fibers are developed, and the brain areas so connected 
that they can work together as a unit. A simple il- 




FiG. 16. 



-Diagram illustrating the paths of association. 



lustration will enable us to see more clearly how the 
nervous mechanism acts to bring this about. 

Suppose that I am walking along a country road 
deeply engaged in meditation, and that I come to a 
puddle of water in my pathway. I may turn aside 
and avoid the obstruction without my attention being 
called to it, and without interruption of my train of 
thought. The act has been automatic. In this case 
the nerve current has passed from the eye {8) over an 
afferent fiber to a sensory center {s) in the nervous 
system below the cortex; from there it has been for- 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 51 

warded to a motor center (m) in the same region, and 
on out over a motor fiber to the proper muscles (M), 
which are to execute the required act. The act hav- 
ing been completed, the sensory nerves connected 
with the muscles employed report the fact back that 
the work is done, thus completing the circuit. This 
event may be taken as an illustration of literal thou- 
sands of acts which we perform daily without the in- 
tervention of consciousness, and hence without involv- 
ing the hemispheres. 

If, however, instead of avoiding the puddle uncon- More com- 
sciously, I do so from considerations of the danger 
of wet feet and the disagreeableness of soiled shoes 
and the ridiculous appearance I shall make, then the 
current cannot take the short circuit, but must pass 
on up to the cortex. Here it awakens consciousness 
to take notice of the obstruction, and calls forth the 
images which aid in directing the necessary move- 
ments. This simple illustration may be greatly com- 
plicated, substituting for it one of the more complex 
problems which are continually presenting themselves 
to us for solution. But the truth of the illustration 
still holds. Whether in the simple or the complex 
act, there is always a forward passing of the nerve 
current through the sensory and thought centers, and 
on out through the motor centers to the organs which 
are to be concerned in the motor response. 

Thus it will be seen that in the simplest act which The factors 
can be considered there are the following factors: in an act. 
(1) The stimulus which acts on the end organ; (2) the 
ingoing current over an afferent nerve; (3) the sen- 
sory or interpreting cells; (4) the fibers connecting 
the sensory with a motor center; (5) the motor cells; 
(6) the efferent nerve to carry the direction for the 
5 



52 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Application 
to educa- 
tion. 



Nutrition 
an impor- 
tant factor 
in brain 
efficiency. 



movement outward to the muscle; (7) the motor re- 
sponse ; and, finally, ( 8 ) the report back that the act 
has been performed. With this in mind it fairly be- 
wilders one to think of the marvelous complexity of 
the work that is going on in our nervous mechanism 
every moment of our life, even without considering 
the higher thought processes at all. How, with these 
added, the resulting complexity all works out into 
beautiful harmony is indeed beyond comprehension. 

The great problem of education is, on the physical 
side, it would seem, then, to provide for ourselves 
and those we seek to educate as rich an environment 
of sensory stimuli as possible; one whose impressions 
will be full of suggestions to motor activity and to 
the higher thought processes ; and then to give oppor- 
tunity for thought and expression in the largest pos- 
sible number of lines. And added to this must be 
frequent and clear sensory and motor recall, a living 
over again of the sights and sounds and odors and the 
motor activities we have once experienced. For in this 
way the nerve cells and fibers which were concerned 
in the original sensation or thought or movement are 
again brought into exercise, and their development 
continued. Through recall we are able not only 
greatly to multiply the effects of the immediate sen- 
sory and motor stimuli which come to us, but also to 
improve our power of thinking by getting a fund of 
images upon which the mind can draw. 

As stated before, the second factor concerned in the 
efficiency of the nervous system is vigor, and this is 
largely dependent on nutrition. No amount of exer- 
cise, no matter how favorable the stimuli, can result 
in an efficient brain if the cells are starved for want 
of nourishment. No other tissue of the body is so 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 53 

susceptible to fatigue and nutrition as are the nerve 
cells. Histologists find that the nuclei of nerve cells 
are shrunk as much as fifty per cent by extreme 
fatigue. For rapid and complete recuperation the 
cells must have not only the best of nourishment but 
opportunity for rest as well. Reasonable fatigue fol- 
lowed by proper recuperation is not harmful, but 
even necessary if the best development is to be at- 
tained; but fatigue without proper nourishment and 
rest is fatal to all mental operations, and indeed 
finally to the nervous system itself, leaving it per- 
manently in a condition of low tone, and incapable 
of rallying to strong effort. 

For the best nutrition there is necessary first of The factors 
all plenty of nourishing and healthful food. Science tritkm. ^^' 
and experience have both disproved the supposition 
that students should be scantily fed. O'Shea claims 
that many brain workers are far short of their highest 
grade of efiiciency because of starving their brains 
from poor diet. And not only must the food be of 
the right quality, but the body must be in good health. 
Little good to eat the best of food unless it is being 
properly digested and assimilated. And little good 
if all the rest is as it should be, and the right 
amount of oxidation does not go on in the brain so 
as to remove the worn out cells and make place for 
new ones. This warns us that pure air and a strong 
circulation are indispensable to the best working of 
our brains. No doubt many students who find their 
work too hard for them might locate the trouble in 
their stomachs or their lungs or the poor food they 
eat, rather than in their minds. 

There is, perhaps, no greater foe to brain growth 
and efficiency than the nervous and worn out condi- 



54 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Necessity 
for sleep 
and free- 
dom from 
worry. 



tion which comes from loss of sleep or from worry. 
Experiments in the psychological laboratories have 
shown that nerve cells shrivel up and lose their vital- 
ity under loss of sleep. Let this go on for any con- 
siderable length of time, and the loss is irreparable; 
for the cells can never recuperate. This is especially 
true in the case of children or young people. Many 
school boys and girls, indeed many college students, 
are making slow progress in their studies not because 
they are mentally slow or inefficient, not even chiefly 
because they lose time that should be put on their les- 
sons, but because they are incapacitating their brains 
for good service through loss of sleep and the conse- 
quent late hours. Add to this condition that of worry, 
which often accompanies it from the fact of failure 
in lessons, and a naturally good and well-organized 
nervous system is sure to fail. Worry, from whatever 
cause, should be avoided as one would avoid poison, 
if we would bring ourselves to the highest degree of 
efficiency. Not only does worry temporarily '* unfit 
the mind for its best work," but its evil results are 
permanent, since the mind is left with a poorly de- 
veloped or undone nervous system through which to 
work, even after the cause for worry has been removed 
and the worry itself has ceased. 



EXERCISES 



What different sensory stimuli can be obtained from a 
summer excursion to the woods? 

Does everyone who takes such an excursion receive all 
these stimuli? 

Will a sensory stimulus like that coming from the song of 
a bird produce the same effect on the cortex whether we 



SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 55 

consciously hear the song or not? Consider also the ques- 
tion of sensory recall. 

Have you ever tried to discover how many different colors 
and shades are discernible in some variegated landscape? 
How many different sounds you can detect on a summer 
evening? How many different qualities of touch you can 
determine by passing your fingers over various leaves? 

What mental effects have you noticed from loss of sleep? 
from worry? from impure air? from insufficient exercise? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Halleck, " Education of the Central Nervous System," 
Chapters VII and XI. 

Rowe, " The Physical Nature of the Child/' Chapters IV-V. 

James, " Talks to Teachers," Chapters V-VII. 

Hall, "Adolescence," Chapter III. 

Stratton, " Experimental Psychology and Culture," Chap- 
ter XII. 

Groos, " The Play of Man," Part I, Chapters I and II. 



CHAPTER V 



HABIT 



The in- 
fluence of 
habit. 



Habit a 
method of 
economy. 



** Habit is second nature? Habit is ten times na- 
ture ! ' ' said Wellington. Habit is the * * bane or the 
blessing ' ' of our lives ; our ' ' best friend or our 
worst enemy ' ' ; the ' ' cable which we cannot break. ' ' 
We are but '' bundles of habits." So testify the wise 
men. Our lives are largely a daily round of activities 
dictated by our habits. Most of our movements and 
acts are habitual; we think as we have formed the 
habit of thinking ; our moral judgments and decisions 
are tinged by habit ; our religious exercises, even, may 
become largely a matter of habit. 

And all this has its good side as well as its bad. 
If we could not form habits, we could improve but 
little in our ways of doing things, no matter how many 
times we did them over and over. We should have 
to go through the same bungling process of dressing 
ourselves as when we first learned it as children. Now 
the dressing does itself, and the mind is left free to 
deal with more important things. Were it not for 
habit, we should never find it possible to attend to 
some disagreeable task or follow an undesirable line 
of work without a severe and exhausting struggle 
over each separate case; we could never become able 
almost automatically to choose the right and shun 
the wrong without a battle. Every act that we per- 
form would be a new act, and the wear and tear of 

56 



HABIT 57 

deciding afresh each time how this and that thing 
should be done would speedily exhaust our powers, 
and life would not be worth living; in fact, life ex- 
cept on the lowest plane would be impossible. 

Without habit, personality could not exist; for we Physical 
could never do a thing twice alike, and hence would 
be a new person each succeeding moment. The acts 
which give us our own peculiar individuality are our 
habitual acts — the little things which do themselves 
moment by moment without care or attention, and are 
the truest and best expression of our real selves. 
Probably no one of us could be very sure which arm 
he puts into the sleeve, or which foot he puts into the 
shoe, first; and yet each of us certainly formed the 
habit long ago of doing these things in a certain way. 
We might not be able to describe just how we hold 
knife and fork and spoon, and yet each has his own 
characteristic and habitual way of handling them. 
We sit down and get up in some characteristic way, 
and the very poise of our heads and attitudes of our 
bodies are the result of habit. We get sleepy and 
wake up, become hungry and thirsty at certain hours, 
through force of habit. We form the habit of lik- 
ing a certain chair, or nook, or corner, or path, or 
desk, and then seek this to the exclusion of all others. 
We habitually use a particular pitch of voice and type 
of enunciation in speaking, and this becomes one of 
our characteristic marks; or we form the habit of 
using barbarisms or solecisms of language in youth, 
and these cling to us and become an inseparable part 
of us later in life. 

On the mental side the case is no different. Our Mental 
thinking is as characteristic as our physical acts. We 
may form the habit of thinking things out logically, or 



58 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



of jumping to conclusions ; of thinking critically and 
independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on 
the authority of others. We may form the habit of 
carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming 
sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, 
ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a 
good conversationalist and doing our part in a social 
group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and 
needing to be entertained. We may form the habit 
of observing the things about us and enjoying the 
beautiful in our environment, or of failing to observe 
or to enjoy. We may form the habit of obeying the 
voice of conscience or of weakly yielding to tempta- 
tion without a struggle ; of taking a reverent attitude 
of prayer in our devotions, or of merely saying our 
prayers. 

I have said that we may form habits in all these 
lines, but that is not the way to put it ; we must form 
habits in these and all other lines. It is not in our 
power to say whether we will form habits or not ; for, 
once started, they go on forming themselves by day 
and night, steadily and relentlessly. Habit is, then, 
one of the great factors to be reckoned with in our 
lives, and the question becomes not Shall we form 
habits 1 but what habits we shall form. And we have 
the determining of this question largely in our own 
power, for habits do not just happen, nor do they 
come to us ready made. We ourselves make them 
from day to day through the acts we perform, and in 
so far as we have control over our acts, in that far 
we can determine our habits. 

Habit is to be explained from the standpoint of its 
physical basis. Habits are formed because the tissues 
of our bodies are capable of being modified by use, and 



HABIT 59 

of so retaining the effects of this modification that the 
same act is easier of performance each succeeding 
time. This results in the old act being repeated in- 
stead of a new one being selected, and hence the old 
act is perpetuated. 

Even dead and inert matter obeys the same prin- 
ciples in this regard as does living matter. Says M. 
Leon Dumont: '' Everyone knows how a garment, 
having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape of 
the body better than when it was new ; there has been 
a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit 
of cohesion; a lock works better after having been 
used some time ; at the outset more force was required 
to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism. 
The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon 
of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper 
when it has been folded already. This saving of 
trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which 
brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less 
amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds 
of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able 
artist, because the fibers of the wood at last contract 
habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. 
This is what gives such inestimable value to instru- 
ments that have belonged to great masters. Water, in 
flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows 
broader and deeper ; and, after having ceased to flow, 
it resumes when it flows again the path traced for 
itself before. Just so, the impressions of outer objects 
fashion for themselves in the nervous system more 
and more appropriate paths, and these vital phe- 
nomena recur under similar excitements from without, 
when they have been interrupted for a certain time.'* ^ 

* Quoted by James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, p. 135. 



60 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Living tis- 
sue readily 
forms 
habits. 



Nerve tis- 
sue most 
susceptible 
to habit. 



What is true of inanimate matter is doubly true 
of living tissue. The tissues of the human body can be 
molded into almost any form you choose if taken 
in time. A child may be placed on his feet at too 
early an age, and the bones of his legs form the habit 
of remaining bent. The Flathead Indian binds a 
board on the skull of his child, and its head forms 
the habit of remaining flat on the top. Wrong bodily 
postures produce curvature of the spine, and per- 
nicious modes of dress deform the bones of the chest. 
The muscles may be trained into the habit of keeping 
the shoulders straight or letting them droop ; those of 
the back, to keep the body well up on the hips, or to 
let it sag; those of locomotion, to give us a light, 
springy step, or to allow a shuffling carriage; those 
of speech, to give us a clear-cut, accurate articula- 
tion, or a careless, halting one ; and those of the face, 
to give us a cheerful cast of countenance, or a glum 
and morose expression. 

But the nervous tissue is the most sensitive and 
easily molded of all the bodily tissues. So delicate is 
the organization of the brain structure and so un- 
stable its molecules, that even the perfume of the 
flower, which assails the nose of a child, the song of 
a bird, which strikes his ear, or the fleeting dream, 
which lingers but for a second in his sleep, has so 
modified his brain that it will never again be as if 
these things had not been experienced. Every sen- 
sory current which runs in from the outside world; 
every motor current which runs out to command a 
muscle ; every thought which we think, has so modified 
the nerve structure through which it acts, that a tend- 
ency remains for a like act to be repeated. Our brain 
and nervous system is daily being molded into fixed 



HABIT 



61 



habits of acting by our thoughts and deeds, and thus 
becomes the automatic register of all we do. 

The old Chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental 
and vital truth. These celestials tell their children 
that each child is accompanied by day and by night, 
every moment of his life, by an invisible fairy, who is 
provided with a pencil and tablet. It is the duty of this 
fairy to put down every deed of the child both good 
and evil, in an indelible record which will one day rise 
as a witness against him. So it is in very truth with 
our brains. The wrong act may have been performed 
in secret, no living being may ever know that we per- 
formed it, and a merciful Providence may forgive it; 
but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the 
time beside us writing the record, and the history 
of that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our 
brain. It may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth 
and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can 
never be quite effaced; they will remain with us as 
a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical 
moment in a great emergency we shall be in danger of 
defeat from the effects of that long past and forgot- 
ten act. 

Education consists in large part in '^ making our 
nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. ' ' And 
any youth who is forming a large number of useful 
habits is receiving no mean education, no matter if 
his knowledge of books may be limited; on the other 
hand, no one who is forming a large number of bad 
habits is being well educated, no matter how brilliant 
his knowledge may be. 

Childhood and youth is the great time for habit- 
forming. Then the brain is plastic and easily molded, 
and it retains its impressions more indelibly; later 



Our nerv- 
ous sys- 
tems keep 
an indelible 
record of 
our acts. 



Hence the 
importance 
of training 
them 
aright. 



Youth the 
time for 
habit-form- 
ing. 



62 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

it is hard to modify, and the impressions made are 
less permanent. It is hard to teach an old dog new 
tricks; nor would he remember them if you could 
teach them to him, nor be able to perform them well 
even if he could remember them. The young child 
will, within the first few weeks of its life, form habits 
of sleeping and feeding. It may in a few days be led 
into the habit of sleeping in the dark, or of requiring 
a light ; of going to sleep lying quietly, or of insisting 
upon being rocked; of getting hungry by the clock, 
or of wanting its food at all times when it finds noth- 
ing else to do, and so on. It is wholly outside the 
power of the mother or the nurse to determine whether 
the child shall form habits, but largely within their 
power to say what habits shall be formed, since they 
control his acts. As the child grows older, the range 
of his habits increases ; and by the time he has reached 
his middle teens, the greater number of his personal 
habits are formed. It is very doubtful whether a boy 
who has not formed habits of punctuality before the 
age of fifteen will ever be entirely trustworthy in mat- 
ters requiring precision in this line. The girl who 
has not, before this age, formed habits of neatness and 
order will hardly make a tidy housekeeper later in her 
life. Those who in youth have no opportunity to 
habituate themselves to the usages of society may 
study books on etiquette and employ private instruct- 
ors in the art of polite behavior all they please later in 
life, but they will never cease to be awkward and ill 
at ease. None are at a greater disadvantage than 
the suddenly-grown-rich who attempt late in life to 
surround themselves with articles of art and luxury 
though their habits were all formed amid barrenness 
and want during their earlier years. 



HABIT 



63 



What youth does not dream of being great, or noble, Value of 
or a celebrated scholar ! And how few there are who of achieve- 
finally achieve their ideals ! Where does the cause of "^^^*- 
failure lie? Surely not in the lack of high ideals. 
Multitudes of young people have " Excelsior! " as 
their motto, and yet never get started up the moun- 
tain slope, let alone toiling on to its top. They have 
put in hours dreaming of the glory farther up, and 
have never begun to climb. The difficulty comes in 
not realizing that the only way to become what we 
wish or dream that we may become is to form the habit 
of being that thing. To form the habit of achieve- 
ment, of effort, of self-sacrifice, if need be. To form 
the habit of deeds along with dreams; to form the 
habit of doing. 

Who of us has not at this moment lying in wait 
for his convenience in the dim future a number of ^hat 
things which he means to do just as soon as this term 
of school is finished, or this job of work is completed, 
or when he is not so busy as now? And how seldom 
does he ever get to these things at all ! Darwin tells 
that in his youth he loved poetry, art, and music, but 
was so busy with his scientific work that he could 
ill spare the time to indulge these tastes. So he prom- 
ised himself that he would devote his time to scien- 
tific work and make his mark in this. Then he would 
have time for the things that he loved, and would cul- 
tivate his taste for the fine arts. He made his mark 
in the field of science, and then turned again to 
poetry, to music, to art. But alas ! they were all dead 
and dry bones to him, without life or interest. He 
had passed the time when he could ever form the 
taste for them. He had formed his habits in an- 
other direction, and now it was forever too late to 



We must 
daily be 
we 
would 
become. 



64 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



form the new habits anew. His own conclusion is, 
that if he had his life to live over again, he would 
each week listen to some musical concert and visit 
some art gallery, and that each day he would read 
some poetry, and thereby keep alive and active the 
love for them. 

Habit is a means by which we may economize effort. 
To have to decide each time the question comes up 
whether we will attend to this lecture or sermon or 
lesson; whether we will persevere and go on through 
this piece of disagreeable work which we have begun ; 
whether we will go to the trouble of being courteous 
and kind to this or that poor or unlovely or dirty 
fellow-mortal ; whether we will take this road because 
it looks easy, or that one because we know it to be the 
one we ought to take ; whether we will be strictly fair 
and honest when we might just as well be the opposite ; 
whether we will resist the temptation which dares us ; 
whether we will do this duty, hard though it is, which 
confronts us — to have to decide each of these questions 
every time it presents itself is to put too large a pro- 
portion of our thought and energy on things which 
should take care of themselves. For all these things 
should early become so nearly habitual that they can 
be settled with the very minimum of expenditure of 
energy when they arise. 

It is a noble thing to be able to attend by sheer force 
of will when the interest lags, or some more attractive 
thing appears, but far better is it to have so formed 
the habit of attention that we naturally fall into that 
attitude when this is the desirable thing. To under- 
stand what I mean, you have but to look over a class 
or an audience and note the different ways which peo- 
ple have of finally settling down to listening. Some 



HABIT 65 

with an attitude which says, '* Now here I am, 
ready to listen to you if you will interest me, otherwise 
not. ' ' Others with a manner which says, ' ' Now I did 
not really come here expecting to listen, and you will 
have a large task if you interest me; I never listen 
unless I am compelled to, and the responsibility rests 
on you." Others plainly say, " I really mean to lis- 
ten, but I have hard work to control my thoughts, and 
if I wander I shall not blame you altogether; it is 
just my way." And still others say, " When I am 
expected to listen, I always listen whether there is 
anything much to listen to or not. I have formed 
that habit, and so have no quarrel with myself about 
it. You can depend on me to be attentive, for I can- 
not afford to weaken my habit of attention whether 
you do well or not." Every speaker will clasp these 
last listeners to his heart and feed them on the choicest 
thoughts of his soul; they are the ones to whom he 
speaks and to whom his address will appeal. 

To be able to persevere in the face of difficulties Habit en- 
and hardships and carry through the disagreeable meet the 
thing in spite of the protests of our natures against ^Se^^^^" 
the sacrifice which it requires, is a creditable thing; 
but it is more creditable to have so formed the habit 
of perseverance that the disagreeable duty shall be 
done without a struggle, or protest, or question. 
Horace Mann testifies of himself that whatever suc- 
cess he was able to attain was made possible through 
the early habit which he formed of never stopping 
to inquire whether he liked to do anything which 
needed doing, but of doing everything equally well 
and without question, both the pleasant and the un- 
pleasant. 

The youth who can fight out a moral battle and win 



66 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



And may 
be used to 
place us on 
safer moral 
ground. 



Even good 
habits need 
to be 
modified. 



This is to 
be accom- 
plished 
through 
attention. 



against the allurements of some attractive temptation 
is worthy the highest honor and praise; but so long 
as he has to fight the same battle over and over again, 
he is on dangerous ground morally. For good 
morals must finally become habits, so ingrained in us 
that the right decision comes largely without effort 
and without struggle. Otherwise the strain is too 
great, and defeat will occasionally come; and defeat 
means weakness and at last disaster, after the 
spirit has tired of the constant conflict. And so on 
in a hundred lines. Good habits are more to be 
coveted than individual victories in special cases, much 
as these are to be desired. For good habits mean vic- 
tories all along the line. 

But even in good habits there is a danger. Habit 
is the opposite of attention. Habit relieves attention 
of unnecessary strain. Every habitual act was at 
one time, either in the history of the race or of the in- 
dividual, a voluntary act; that is, it was performed 
under active attention. As the habit grew, attention 
was gradually rendered unnecessary, until finally it 
dropped entirely out. And herein lies the danger. 
Habit once formed has no way of being modified un- 
less in some way attention is called to it, for a habit 
left to itself becomes more and more firmly fixed. 
The rut grows deeper. In very few, if any, of our 
actions can we afford to have this the case. Our 
habits need to be progressive, they need to grow, to 
be modified, to be improved. Otherwise they will be- 
come an incrusting shell, fixed and unyielding, which 
will limit our growth. 

It is necessary, then, to keep our habitual acts un- 
der some surveillance of attention, to pass them in 
review for inspection every now and then, that we 



HABIT 67 

may discover possible modifications which will make 
them more serviceable. We need to be inventive, to 
find out constantly better ways of doing things, to 
avoid ruts. 

A good illustration of what I mean is found in the 
way some play tennis. At first every act is a volun- 
tary act directed by the mind. The playing is 
awkward and ineffective. Finally, the drives, the 
lobs, and the cuts become more or less habitual, and 
can be performed much better without conscious at- 
tention to every move than with it. And thus far 
habit is necessary and desirable. But here the multi- 
tude of tennis players stop. Only the few go on, 
and these last are the champions. They are the ones 
who make use of habit just as others do, but who 
constantly direct their attention to improving their 
drives and lobs and cuts, and so do not fall into a 
rut and continue playing season after season no better 
this than last. Mere repetition will form habit, but 
the habit formed will not be an intelligent habit, and 
hence will lead to stagnation. 

On the forming of new habits and the leaving James's 
off of old ones, I know of no better statement than maxims for 
that of James, based on Bain's chapter on " Moral f'tfrmlng. 
Habits." I quote this statement at some length: 
" In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off 
of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves i. Decided 
with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. 
Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall 
reenforce right motives; put yourself assiduously in 
conditions that encourage the new way ; make engage- 
ments incompatible with the old ; take a public pledge, 
if the case allows; in short, develop your resolution 
with every aid you know. This will give your new 



initiative. 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



2. No ex- 
ception to 
be allowed. 



3. Act in 
the new 
line. 



The value 
of our 
habits de- 
pends on 
the charac- 
ter of our 
acts. 



beginning such a momentum that the temptation to 
break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise 
might; and every day during which a breakdown is 
postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at 
all. 

" The second maxim is: Never suffer an exception 
to occur until the new hahit is securely rooted in your 
life. Each lapse is like letting fall a ball of string 
which one is carefully winding up; a single slip un- 
does more than a great many turns will wind again. 
Continuity of training is the great means of making 
the nervous system act infallibly right. . . . The need 
of securing success nerves one to future vigor. 

'*A third maxim may be added to the preceding 
pair: Seize the very first possible opportunity to act 
on every resolution you make, and on every emotional 
prompting you may experience in the direction of the 
habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of 
their forming, but in the moment of their producing 
motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communi- 
cate the new ' set ' to the brain. ' ' ^ 

And finally, let no one be disturbed or afraid 
because in a little time you become a ^' walking 
bundle of habits. ' ' For in so far as your good actions 
predominate over your bad ones, that much will your 
good habits outweigh your bad habits. Silently, mo- 
ment by moment, efficiency is growing out of all 
worthy acts well done. Every bit of heroic self-sac- 
rifice, every battle fought and won, every good deed 
performed, is being irradicably credited to you in 
your nervous system, and will finally add its mite to- 
ward achieving the success of your ambitions. 

^ " Psychology," vol. i, pp. 123, 124; also, " Briefer Course," p. 
145. 



HABIT 69 



EXERCISES IN INTROSPECTION 

Select some act which you have recently begun to perform 
and watch it grow more and more habitual. Notice care- 
fully for a week and see whether you do not discover some 
habits which you did not know you had. Make a catalogue 
of your bad habits; of the most important of your good ones. 

Set out to form some new habit which you desire to possess ; 
also to break some undesirable habit, watching carefully 
what takes place in both cases, and how long it requires. 

If habits have a tendency to keep on growing stronger, 
how does it come that we ever break them? 

Is it better to break a bad habit abruptly or by degrees? 

Why are habits formed in youth so much harder to break 
than those formed later in life? 

How important a part do you think habit plays in deter- 
mining a man's success or failure in life? 

Can you distinguish between mental and physical habits? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Royce, "Outlines of Psychology," Chapter VIII. 
James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter X. 
James, " Talks to Teachers," Chapter VIII. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapter III. 

Oppenheim, " Mental Growth and Control," Chapter VII. 
Rowe, "The Physical Nature of the Child," Chapters X 
and XI. 



CHAPTER VI 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 



The great world of nature without and the mind 
within, our material environment on the one hand 
and the means of knowing it on the other, how is the 
introduction brought about and the acquaintance 
continued? The diversified landscape of field and 
wood, our companions who sit about us, the familiar 
objects in the room, the pictures on the walls, the 
statuary, the books lying open before us; the twitter 
of the birds, the ringing of a distant bell, the roar of 
a train, the chatter of voices outside, the drone of in- 
sects, and a host of other familiar sounds; the touch 
of the soft breeze upon the cheek, the silken ribbon 
stroked with the fingers, the contact of seat and cloth- 
ing, the feel of some rough or hard object in the hand; 
the warmth of the room, the coldness of the metal on 
the seat; the sour of the apple, the sweet of the 
candy; the delicate perfume of the bouquet; the or- 
ganic sensations from our own bodies — all these are 
an appeal to the mind to be known by it. 

And we come by this knowledge so gradually and 
unconsciously that the most marvelous appears to us 
as commonplace, and we take for granted many things 
which it would puzzle us to explain. We say, ** Of 
course I see yonder green tree: it is about ten rods 
distant. '* But why ''of course"? Why should 
objects at a distance from us and with no evident con- 
nection between us and them be known to us at all 

70 



senses. 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 71 

merely by turning our eyes in their direction when 
there is light ? Why not rather say with the blind son 
of Professor Puiseaux, of Paris, who, when asked if he 
would like to be restored to sight, answered: *' If it 
were not for curiosity I would rather have long arms. 
It seems to me that my hands would teach me bettei* 
what is passing in the moon than your eyes or tele- 
scopes. ' ' 

We listen and then say, * ' Yes, that is a certain bell iiiustra- 
ringing in the neighboring village," as if this were the^various 
the most simple thing in the world. But why should 
one piece of metal striking against another a mile or 
two away make us aware that there is a bell there at 
all, let alone that it is a certain bell whose tone we 
recognize,? Or we pass our fingers over a piece of 
cloth and decide, " That is silk." But why, merely 
by placing our skin in contact with a bit of material, 
should we be able to know its quality, much less that 
it is cloth and that its threads were originally spun 
by an insect? Or we take a sip of liquid and say, 
' ' This milk is sour. ' * But why should we be able by 
taking the liquid into the mouth and bringing it into 
contact with the mucous membrane be able to tell 
that it is milk, and that it possesses the quality which 
we call sourf Or, once more, we get a whiff of air 
through the open window in the springtime and say, 
*' There is a lilac bush in bloom on the lawn." Yet 
why, from inhaling air containing particles of lilac, 
should we be able to know that there is anything out- 
side, much less that it is a flower and of a particular 
variety which we call lilac? Or, finally, we hold a 
heated flatiron up near the cheek and say, " This is 
too hot ! it will burn the cloth." But why by holding 
this object a foot away from the face do we know 



72 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



that it is there, let alone knowing its temperature? 
Let us seek an answer. 

Some of the outside world we know only as we come 
into immediate and direct contact with it, as in the 
case of taste and smell and touch. Other parts of it 
we can know at a distance, as in sight and hearing and 
temperature. Nor is the one fact more wonderful than 
the other. The marvel first of all is that the great 
world outside of the mind is knowable to it through 
the gateways of the body which we call the senses. 
And further that, after we come to know a sufficient 
part of the world by means of the senses, and have 
come to see the relation existing between the known 
parts, we can then go on through thought to discover 
still other parts of it without the use of the senses at 
all. The astronomer La Verrier could sit in his study 
and, after a long series of computations and calcula- 
tions, write to his brother astronomers who had bet- 
ter telescopes than he, ^' If you will turn your tele- 
scopes to a certain spot in the heavens on the night I 
shall tell you, you will there discover a new planet 
which has never yet been seen by man." And sure 
enough it was there, unerringly located by man's 
reason where his senses could not reach. 

Further, our senses come through experience to have 
the power of trading knowledge, by which each puts 
its knowledge at the disposal of the others. Thus 
we take a glance out of the window and say that the 
day looks cold, although we well know that we can- 
not see cold. Or we say that the melon sounds green, 
or the bell sounds cracked, although a crack or green- 
ness cannot be heard. Or we say that the box feels 
empty, although emptiness cannot be felt. We have 
come to associate cold, originally experienced with 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 73 

days which look like the one we now see, with this par- 
ticular appearance, and so we say we see the cold; 
sounds like the one coming from the bell we have 
come to associate with cracked bells, and that coming 
from the melon with green melons, until we say un- 
hesitatingly that the bell sounds cracked and the 
melon sounds green. And so with the various senses. 
Each gleans from the world its own particular bit of 
knowledge, but all are finally in a partnership, and 
what is each one's knowledge belongs to every other 
one in so far as the other can use it. 

The explanation of the ultimate nature of knowl- Thesensorj^ 
edge, and how we reach it through contact with our p'"*^^^^^®^- 
material environment, we will leave to the philoso- 
phers. And battles enough they have over the ques- 
tion, and still others they will have before the matter 
is settled. The easier and more important problem 
for us is to describe the processes by which the mind 
comes to know its environment, and to see how it uses 
this knowledge in thinking. This much we shall be 
able to do, for it is often possible to describe a proc- 
ess and discover its laws even when we cannot fully 
explain its nature and origin. We know the process 
of digestion and assimilation, and the laws which 
govern them, although we do not understand the ulti- 
mate nature and origin of life which makes these pos- 
sible. 

Yet even in the relatively simple description which The quai- 

1 -t 1 -n j» J. J ities of ob- 

we have proposed many puzzles will coniront us, and jgcts exist 
one of them appears at the very outset. This is that J^.^^^ 
the qualities which we usually ascribe to objects 
really exist in our own minds and not in the objects at 
all. Take, for instance, the common qualities of light 
and color. The physicist tells us that what we see as 



74 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

light is occasioned by an incredibly rapid beating of 
ether waves on the retina of the eye. All space is 
filled with this ether; and when it is light — that is, 
when some object like the sun or other light-giving 
body is present — ^the ether is set in motion by the 
vibrating molecules of the body that is the source 
of light, its waves strike the retina, a current is pro- 
duced and carried to the brain, and we see light. This 
means, then, that space, the medium in which we see 
objects, is not filled with light, but with very rapid 
waves of ether, and that the light which we see really 
exists but in our own minds as the mental response 
to the physical stimulus of ether waves. Likewise 
with color. Color is produced by ether waves of dif- 
ferent lengths and degrees of rapidity. Thus ether 
waves at the rate of 450 billions a second give us 
the sensation of red ; of 472 billions a second, orange ; 
of 526 billions a second, yellow; of 589 billions a 
second, green; of 640 billions a second, blue; of 
722 billions a second, indigo ; of 790 billions a second, 
violet. What exists outside of us, then, is these ether 
waves of different rates, and not the colors themselves. 
The beautiful yellow and crimson of a sunset, the 
variegated colors of a landscape, the delicate pink in 
the cheek of a child, the blush of a rose, the shim- 
mering green of the lake — ^these reside not in the 
objects themselves, but in the consciousness of the one 
who sees them. The objects possess but the quality of 
reflecting back to the eye ether waves of the par- 
ticular rate corresponding to the color which we as- 
cribe to them. Thus " red " objects reflect back 
ether waves of a rate of 450 billions a second, and no 
others; " white " objects reflect all rates; ** black " 
objects reflect none. 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 75 

The case is no different with regard to sound. Sound, 



"When we speak of a sound coming from a bell, what 
we really mean is that the vibrations of the bell have 
set up waves in the air between it and our ear, which 
have produced corresponding vibrations in the ear; 
that a nerve current was thereby produced ; and that 
a sound was heard. But the sound is a mental thing, 
and exists only in our own consciousness. What 
passed between the sounding object and ourselves was 
not sound, but waves in the intervening air, ready to 
be transferred through the machinery of nerves and 
brain into the beautiful tones and melodies and har- 
monies of the mind. And so with all other sensations. 
What exists outside of us is a stimulus of a kind 
suitable to excite to activity a certain end organ of 
taste, or touch, or smell, or sight, or hearing; what 
exists within us is the nervous machinery capable of 
converting this stimulus into a nerve current which 
shall produce an activity in the cortex of the brain; 
what results is the mental object which we call a sen- 
sation of taste, smell, touch, sight, or hearing. 

Nor ought these facts to make nature seem the less 
wonderful to us. For it is certainly no less marvel- 
ous for nature to be able so to act on the nervous 
system that sensations shall result in the mind than it 
would be for the objects to possess such qualities as 
color themselves instead of these existing in our con- 
sciousness. On the other hand, a certain dignity is 
added to the mind when we think that it is not merely 
able to know light and color and sound and all the 
rest belonging to objects external to itself, but is able 
even to interpret vibrations of energy coming from 
these objects, and translate them into various sensa- 
tions. 



etc. 



76 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Sensation 
the sim- 
plest form 
of knowl- 
edge. 



Sensations 
give us not 
objects but 
qualities. 



The simplest bit of knowledge which the mind can 
get is a sensation. Yet it is impossible to define a 
sensation in any exact way; and in actual life a sen- 
sation is never experienced by itself, but is always 
merged in some perception in which it plays a part. 
To quote James: ''All we can say on this point is 
that what we mean hy sensations are first things in the 
way of consciousness. They are the immediate results 
upon consciousness of nerve currents as they enter the 
brain, and before they have awakened any suggestions 
or associations with past experience. But it is obvious 
that such immediate sensations can he realized only 
in the earliest days of life.^' Very soon memories 
and associations become coupled with the sensations, 
and after that all succeeding sensations awaken ves- 
tiges of former impressions, and perception is begin- 
ning to develop. 

Indeed, unrelated sensations by themselves would 
be wholly inadequate to give us either a continuous 
consciousness or a knowledge of the material world 
about us. I might see an orange and get its color ; smell 
it and get its odor; put it into my mouth and get its 
taste; touch it with my hands and get a sensation of 
contact, pressure, and temperature ; lift it and get its 
weight; drop it and get its sound as it falls. But if 
this were all, I should never know the orange at all. 
If each one of these separate bits of knowledge had to 
remain forever separate from the others, I' should 
know a list of qualities, but have no knowledge of the 
thing to which they belonged. It is only by getting 
all the qualities of an object through as many different 
sensations as possible and then knowing them all to- 
gether in relation to this object that we can ever come 
to know it as an object. It is in this way, through 



alone. 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 77 

a multiplicity of unified experiences, that we build up 
the material world of our environment. And all such 
experience, once gained, assists in still further ac- 
quisition. 

The uncertainty of knowle(^ge gained through sen- Meager 
sation unaided by experience is shown in the case of fro^slght 
persons born blind and in later years restored to sight. 
Murray tells of the case of a boy born with a cata- 
ract of so opaque a quality that he could detect no 
objects of sight. When he was fourteen years old the 
cataract was removed by Cheselden. At first he 
*' thought that all objects he saw touched his eyes as 
those he felt did his skin." Pictures appeared to 
him '' only parti-colored plains or surfaces diversified 
with a variety of paints. ' ' For several months he had 
no information that they represented solid bodies. 
Then he expected them to feel solid to his hand as 
they looked to his eye, and was much amazed that they 
felt flat when he passed his hand over them. He 
asked which was the lying sense, feeling or seeing. 
Another youth, blind from birth, was cured at 
eighteen. ''When the patient first acquired the fac- 
ulty of sight all objects appeared so near that he was 
sometimes afraid of coming in contact with them, 
though they were in reality a great distance from 
him. . . . All objects appeared to him perfectly flat. 
Thus, although he very well knew by his touch that 
the nose was prominent and the eyes sunk deeper in 
the head, he saw a human face as a plane. . . . And 
he was continually obliged to have recourse to the 
sense of touch.'' It is a matter of common experience 
for persons of normal vision to find themselves unable 
to judge of distance when the object lacks some of 
its usual associates, as when a mountain is seen across 



78 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



a wide plain, or an object appears on the horizon at 
sea. In the case of hearing, most of us have at some 
time been deceived into thinking that some faint 
sound near at hand was a louder one farther away, 
like mistaking the hum of a mosquito for the whistle 
of a distant locomotive. And probably none of us, 
if we are careful to exclude all odors by plugging 
the nostrils with cotton, can by taste distinguish be- 
tween scraped apple, potato, turnip, or beet, or can 
tell hot milk from tea or coffee of the same temper- 
ature. 

The sensation of sight, left unaided, gives us but 
two qualities, light and color. The eye can distinguish 
many grades of light from purest white on through 
the various grays to the densest black. The range is 
greater still in color. We speak of the seven colors 
of the spectrum, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, 
orange, and red; but if we count all the color tones 
lying between these colors, the number is multiplied 
immensely. Herschel estimated that the workers on 
the mosaics at Rome must have distinguished 30,000 
different color tones. But having given us this large 
number of qualities in color and light, the eye gives 
us nothing else through pure sensation. Knowledge 
of distance, size, and form, which seems so natural to 
the eye, had to be acquired through experience and 
borrowing from the other senses. 

The sensation of sound likewise gives us two qual- 
ities : namely, tones with their accompanying pitch and 
timhre, and noises. Tones, or musical sounds, are 
produced by isochronous or equal-timed vibrations; 
thus, C of the first octave is produced by 256 vibra- 
tions a second, and if this tone is prolonged the vibra- 
tion rate will continue uniformly the same. Noises, 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 79 

on the other hand, are produced by vibrations which 
have no uniformity of vibration rate. The ear 's sensi- 
bility to pitch extends over about seven octaves. The 
seven-octave piano goes down to 27^ vibrations, and 
reaches up to 3,500 vibrations. Notes of about 50,000 
can be heard by an average ear, however; but these 
are too painfully shrill to be musical. Taking into 
account this upper limit, the range of the ear is about 
eleven octaves. The ear, having given us loudness, 
which depends on the amplitude of the vibrations, 
pitch, which depends on the rapidity of the vibrations, 
and timbre, or quality, which depends on the com- 
plexity of the tones, has no further information 
through sensation alone. 

The sense of taste recognizes the four qualities of The four 
sour, siveet, salt, and hitter. Many of the qualities tfeg.^ ^^* * 
which we improperly call tastes are in reality a com- 
plex of taste, smell, touch, and temperature. Smell 
contributes so largely to the sense of taste that many 
articles of food become " tasteless " when we have a 
catarrh, and many nauseating doses of medicine can 
be taken without discomfort if the nose is held. 

The sensations of smell have not been classified so Sensation 
well as those of taste, and we have no distinct nUmes ° ^™^ 
for them. The only definite classification is that 
based on their pleasantness or the opposite. We also 
borrow a few terms and speak of sweet or fragrant 
perfumes, and fresh or close smells. It is perfectly 
evident when we observe animals, or even primitive 
men, that the human race has been evolving greater 
sensibility to odor, while at the same time there has 
been a loss of keenness of scent. 

Cutaneous or skin sensation may arise from either 
mechanical stimulation, such as pressure, a blow, or 



80 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

tickling, or from thermal stimulation from hot or cold 
objects. Stimulated mechanically, the skin gives us 
but two sensation qualities, pressure and pain. Many 
of the qualities which we commonly ascribe to the 
skin sensations are really a complex of cutaneous and 
muscular sensations. Contact is light pressure. 
Hardness and softness depend on the intensity of the 
pressure. Roughness and smoothness arise from in- 
terrupted and continuous pressure, respectively, and 
require movement over the rough or smooth surface. 





• • * • • • 







' C H 

Fig. 17. — Diagram showing distribution of hot and cold spots on the 
back of the hand. C, cold spots; H, hot spots. 

Touch depends on pressure accompanied by the mus- 
cular sensations involved in the movements connected 
with the act. Pain is clearly a different sensation 
from pressure ; but any of the cutaneous or muscular 
sensations may, by excessive stimulation, be made to 
pass over into pain. All parts of the skin are sensi- 
tive to pressure and pain; but certain parts, like the 
finger tips and the tip of the tongue, are more highly 
sensitive than others. The skin varies also in its sen- 
sitivity to heat and cold. If we take a hot or a very 
cold pencil point and pass it rather lightly and slowly 
over the skin, it is easy to discover certain spots from 
which a sensation of warmth or of cold flashes out. 
In this way it is possible to locate the end organs of 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 



81 



temperature almost as accurately as those of hearing 
or of sight. 

The muscles, tendons, and joints also give rise to 
perfectly definite sensations, but they have not been 
named as have the sensations from most of the other 
end organs. Weight is the most clearly marked of 
these sensations. It is through the sensations con- 
nected with movements of muscles, tendons, and joints 
that we come to judge form, size, and distance. 

Finally, to the sensations mentioned so far must 
be added those which come from the internal organs 
of the body. From the alimentary canal we get the 
sensations of hunger, thirst, and nausea; from the 
heart, lungs, and certain other organs come numerous 
well-defined but unnamed sensations which play an 
important part in making up the feeling-tone of our 
daily lives. 

Thus we see that the senses may be looked upon as 
the sentries of the body, standing at the outposts 
where nature and ourselves meet. They discover the 
qualities of the various objects with which we come 
in contact and hand them over to the mind in the form 
of sensations. And these sensations are the raw ma- 
terial out of which we begin to construct the wonder- 
ful world of our material environment. 

This world which we enter through the gateways of 
the senses is more marvelous by far than any fairy 
world created by the fancy of story-tellers. For it 
contains the elements of all they have conceived and 
much more besides. It is more marvelous than any 
structure planned and executed by the mind of man, 
for all the wonders and beauties of the Coliseum or 
of St. Peter's existed in nature before they were 
discovered by the architect and thrown together in 



Muscle and 
joint sen- 
sations. 



Organic 
sensations. 



The raw 
material of 
knowledge 
furnished 
by the 
senses. 



The rich- 
ness and 
complexity 
of our 
material 
environ- 
ment. 



82 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



those magnificent structures. The material advance- 
ment of civilization has been but the discovery of the 
objects, forces, and laws of nature, and their use in 
inventions serviceable to men. And these forces and 
laws of nature were discovered only as they were 
made manifest through objects in the material world. 

The problem lying before each individual who 
would enter fully into this rich world of environment, 
then, is to discover just as large a part of the material 
world about him as possible. In the most humble 
environment of the most uneventful life is to be found 
the material for discoveries and inventions yet un- 
dreamed of. Lying in the shade of an apple tree 
under the open sky, Newton read from a falling apple 
the fundamental principles of the laws of gravitation 
which have revolutionized science ; sitting at a humble 
tea table. Watt watched the gurgling of the steam 
escaping from the kettle, and evolved the steam en- 
gine therefrom; with his simple kite, Franklin drew 
down the lightning from the clouds, and started the 
science of electricity; through studying a ball, the 
ancient scholars conceived the earth to be a sphere, 
and Columbus discovered America. 

Well it is that the child, starting his life's journey, 
cannot see the magnitude of the task before him. 
Cast amid a world of objects of whose very existence 
he is ignorant, and whose meaning and uses have to 
be learned by slow and often painful experience, he 
proceeds step by step through the senses in his dis- 
covery of the objects about him. Yet, considered 
again, we ourselves are after all but a step in advance 
of the child. Though we are somewhat more familiar 
with the use of our senses than he, and know a few 
more objects about us, yet the knowledge of the wisest 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 83 

of US is at best pitifully meager compared with the 
richness of nature. So impossible is it for us to know 
all our material environment, that men have taken 
to becoming specialists. One man will spend his life 
in the study of a certain variety of plants, while 
there are hundreds of thousands of varieties all about 
him; another will study a particular kind of animal 
life, perhaps too minute to be seen with the naked eye, 
while the world is teeming with animal forms which 
he has not time in his short day of life to stop to 
examine ; another will study the land forms and read 
the earth's history from the rocks and geological 
strata, but here again nature 's volume is so large that 
he has time to read but a small fraction of the whole. 
Another studies the human body and learns to read 
from its expressions the signs of health and sickness, 
and to prescribe remedies for its ills ; but in this field 
also he has found it necessary to divide the work, and 
so we have specialists for almost every organ of the 
body. 

How, then, do we proceed to the discovery of this How the 
world of objects? Let us watch the child and learn ceeds.^^^" 
the secret from him. Give the babe a ball, and he 
applies every sense to it to discover its qualities. He 
stares at it, he takes it in his hands and turns it over 
and around, he lifts it, he strokes it, he punches and 
jabs it, he puts it to his mouth and bites it, he drops 
it, he throws it and creeps after it. He leaves no stone 
unturned to find out what that thing really is. By Through 
means of the qualities which come to him through the of^objects. 
avenues of sense, he constructs the object. And not 
only does he come to know the ball as a material 
object, but he comes to know also its uses. He is form- 
ing his own best definition of a ball in terms of the 
7 



84 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

sensations which he gets from it and the uses to 
which he puts it, and all this even before he can name 
it or is able to recognize its name when he hears it. 
How much better his method than the one he will 
have to follow a little later when he goes to school and 
learns that ''A ball is a spherical body of any sub- 
stance or size, used to play with, as by throwing, 
kicking, or knocking, etc ! ' ' 

We proceed Nor is the casc in the least different with ourselves. 

child. When we wish to learn about a new object or discover 

new facts about an old one, we do precisely as the 
child does if we are wise. We apply to it every sense 
to which it will afford a stimulus, and finally arrive 
at the object through its various qualities. And just 
in so far as we have failed to use in connection with 
it every sense to which it can minister, just in that 
degree will we have an incomplete perception of it. 
Indeed, just so far as we have failed finally to per- 
ceive it in terms of its functions or uses, in that far 
also have we failed to know it completely. Tomatoes 
were for many years grown as an ornamental garden 
plant before it was discovered that tomatoes could 
minister also to the taste as well as to the sight. The 
clothing of civilized man gives the same sensation of 
texture and color to the savage that it does to its 
owner, but he is so far from perceiving it in the same 
way that he packs it away and continues to go naked. 
The Orientals, who disdain the use of chairs and pre- 
fer to sit cross-legged on the floor, can never perceive 
a chair just as we do who use them daily, and to whom 
chairs are so saturated with social suggestions and 
associations. 

Also, like the child, we must perceive objects 
through our motor response to them as well as in 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 



85 



terms of sensations. The boy who has his knowledge 
of a tennis racket from looking at one in a store win- 
dow, or indeed from handling one and looking it over 
in his room, can never know a tennis racket as does 
the boy who plays with it on the court. Objects get 
their significance not alone from their qualities, but 
even more from their use as related to our own ac- 
tivities. 

Again, like the child, we must get our knowledge of 
an object, if we are to get it well, from the objects 
themselves at first hand, and not second hand through 
descriptions of them by others. The fact that there 
is so much of the material world about us that we can 
never hope to learn it all, has made it necessary to put 
down in books many of the things which have been 
discovered concerning nature. This necessity has, I 
fear, led many away from nature itself to books— 
away from the living reality of things to the dead 
embalming cases of words, in whose empty forms we 
see so little of the significance which resides in the 
things themselves. We are in danger of being satis- 
fied with the forms of knowledge without its siib- 
stance — with definitions contained in words instead 
of in qualities and uses. 

In like manner we come to know distance, form, 
and size. If we have never become acquainted with 
a mile by actually walking a mile, running a mile, rid- 
ing a bicycle a mile, driving a horse a mile, or travel- 
ing a mile on a train, we might listen for a long time 
to some one tell how far a mile is, or state the dis- 
tance from Chicago to Denver, without knowing much 
about it in any way except word definitions. In order 
to understand a mile, we must come to know it in as 
many ways as possible through sense activities of our 



The part 
played by 
the motor 
response. 



First-hand 
contact 
with ob- 
jects neces- 
sary. 



Space re- 
lations 
known 
through 
actual ex- 
perience. 



86 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

own. Although many children have learned that it 
is 25,000 miles around the earth, probably no one 
who has not encircled the globe has any reasonably 
accurate notion just how far this is. For words can- 
not take the place of perceptions in giving us knowl- 
edge. In the case of shorter distances, the same rule 
holds. The eye must be assisted by experience of the 
muscles and tendons and joints in actually covering 
distance, and learn to associate these sensations with 
those of the eye before the eye alone can be able to 
say, ' ' That tree is ten rods distant. ' ' Form and size 
are to be learned in the same way. The hands must 
actually touch and handle the object, experiencing 
• its hardness or smoothness, the way this curve and that 

angle feels, the amount of muscular energy it takes 
to pass the hand over this surface and along that line, 
the eye taking note all the while, before the eye can 
tell at a glance that yonder object is a sphere, and 
that this surface is two feet on the edge. 
Through This association of the senses in working together 

one phase obviatcs the necessity of having all the sensations 
suggest^s^^^* from an object present before we can perceive the 
all the rest, object, providing we have once known it through the 
various senses. We have become so accustomed when 
we see the object hook to experience certain other 
sensations along with that of sight that a mere glance 
at the book seems to start the train of other habitual 
accompaniments; and size, weight, contact, the asso- 
ciations of the reading from it, and all the rest that 
goes to make up hook fall into line at once, merely on 
the suggestion received from the visual sensation. 
While we may not have thought of size, form, weight, 
etc., it is perfectly evident that former experiences 
of these kinds now enter into our perception of this 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 



87 



book ; else why are we so astonished to find that a cer- 
tain object which looks like a book turns out to be only 
a box made to imitate a book, and that it is full of 
bonbons instead of leaves covered with print? Or, 
seeing the head of a familiar cow projecting above 
a fence which hides the rest of the body from view, 
we unhesitatingly say, ** There is my old cow," the 
remainder of the body being supplied from former 
acquaintance. That this former experience really 
does supply what is lacking in the part actually seen 
can be believed from the surprise one would feel if, 
instead of the familiar body of the cow, we should 
find, on going around the fence, that the head was 
now fastened to the body of a whale. 

Thus sensation and perception constantly work to- 
gether to give us our '' world of the senses "; or, 
rather, they are the two phases of the process by 
which this mental world is constructed. Sensation 
gives to the mind its world of qualities, which percep- 
tion uses in constructing the world of objects, and 
these, finally, as existing in certain relations of space 
and time. And it is precisely on this basis that the 
mind must build all that comes after. On this foun- 
dation must rest all our systems of thought and phi- 
losophy. For while thinking may rise above the 
things of the senses, yet here are found the images, the 
' ' thought stuff, ' ' the terms for all thinking. And 
only as we build a broad and thorough foundation in 
sensation and perception can we hope to rear a 
worthy thought structure upon it. 



Sensation 
and percep- 
tion furnish 
the basis 
for our 
thought 
structure. 



S8 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

EXERCISES 

Seat yourself with eyes closed and try to tell the direction 
of some sound, like that made by snapping the finger nail 
against the edge of the thumb nail, the experimenter pro- 
ducing the sound from various directions and at a distance 
of about eighteen inches from the head. 

Look at some complex color, and see if you can determine 
the different colors which enter into it; e. g., what colors 
can you detect in purple? in brown? 

While Hstening to an orchestra try to select out one instru- 
ment and listen to that alone, or listen to one voice in a 
chorus. 

How many different shades can you detect in the land- 
scape spread before you? How many colors? 

Apply a piece of ice to your tongue, to your lips, to your 
forehead, to the back of your hand, to your arm. Does the 
temperature seem the same? Explain. 

Take a large iron nail, cool it in snow or cold water, then 
pass the point slowly over the skin on the back of the hand. 
Do you detect certain points which are distinctly cold? Now 
heat the nail as warm as is comfortable to the skin, and 
repeat the experiment. Do you find spots which are dis- 
tinctly hot? 

After you have taken a glance at a stranger try to recall as 
many items of his dress and appearance as possible. 

Have some one place a miscellaneous collection of common 
objects on a table and cover them with a cloth. Have the 
cloth Ufted for five seconds while you look at the collection. 
How many objects can you name? 

Glance out of a window at a landscape or a street and then 
see how many of the visible objects you can name. 

Have you the habit of perceiving accurately and widely? 
How can this habit be improved? 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 89 



SUGGESTED READINGS 

Royce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chapters V and IX. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapters V and VI. 
Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter III, Sec. 1, and Chapter V. 
Thorndike, " Elements of Psychology," Chapter II. 
James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XX. 
Schaeffer, "Thinking and Learning to Think," Chapters 
II and III. 



CHAPTER VII 



MENTAL IMAGERY 



As you sit thinking, a company of you together, 
your thoughts run in many diverse lines. Yet with 
all this diversity, your minds possess this common 
characteristic: TJiough your thmking all takes place 
in what we call the present moment, yet in every case 
it goes on largely in images of past experiences. Im- 
ages of things you have seen or heard or felt ; of things 
you have thought out before and which now recur to 
you; of things you remember, such as names, dates, 
places, events; of things which you do not remember 
as a part of your past at all, but which belong to it 
and come from it nevertheless — these are the things 
which form a large part of your mental stream, and 
which give content to your thinking. You may think 
of a thing which is actually going on now, or of one 
which is to occur in the future ; but, after all, you are 
dependent on your past experience for the material 
which you put into your thinking of the present mo- 
ment for your thought stuff. Indeed, nothing can 
enter your present thinking which does not link itself 
to something in your past experience. The savage In- 
dian in the primeval forest never thought about kill- 
ing a deer with a rifle merely by pulling a trigger, 
or of turning a battery of machine guns on his ene- 
mies to annihilate them — none of these things were 

90 



MENTAL IMAGERY 91 

related to his past experience; hence he could not 
think in such terms. 

Not only can we not think at all except in terms The present 
of our past experience, but even if we could, the pres- L^^tiS^pist. 
ent would be meaningless to us; for the present is 
interpreted in the light of the past. The sedate man 
of affairs who decries athletic sports, and has never 
taken part in them, cannot understand the wild en- 
thusiasm which prevails between rival teams in a hotly 
contested event. The fine work of art is to the one 
who has never experienced the appeal which comes 
through beauty, only so much of canvas and varie- 
gated patches of color. Paul says that Jesus was 
*' unto the Greeks, foolishness.'* He was foolishness 
to them because nothing in their experience with their 
own gods had been enough like the character of Jesus 
to enable them to interpret Him. 

To the mind incapable of using past experience, the The future 
future also would be impossible ; for we can look for- pends on 
ward into the future only by placing in it experiences *^^ P^®** 
the elements of which we have already known. The 
savage who has never seen the shining yellow metal 
does not dream of a heaven whose streets are paved 
with gold, but rather of a ' ' happy hunting ground. ' ' 
If you will analyze your own dreams of the future 
you will see in them familiar images, perhaps grouped 
together in new forms, but coming in their elements 
from your past experience nevertheless. All that 
would remain to a mind devoid of a past would be 
the little bridge of time which we call the ' ' present 
moment,'' a series of unconnected nows. Thought 
would be impossible, for the mind would have nothing 
to compare and relate. Personality would not exist; 
for personality requires continuity of experience, else 



92 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Rank de- 
termined 
by ability 
to utilize 
past ex- 
perience. 



Past ex- 
perience 
conserved 
in both 
mental and 
physical 
terms. 



we should be a new person each succeeding moment, 
without memory and without plans. Such a mind 
would be no mind at all. 

So important is past experience in determining our 
present thinking and guiding our future actions, that 
the place of an individual in the scale of creation is 
determined largely by the ability to profit by past 
experience. The scientist tells us of many species of 
animals now extinct, which lost their lives and suf- 
fered their race to die out because when, long ago, the 
climate began to change and grow much colder, they 
were unable to use the experience of suffering in the 
last cold season as an incentive to provide shelter, or 
move to a warmer climate against the coming of the 
next and more rigorous one. Man was able to make 
the adjustment ; and, providing himself with clothing 
and shelter and food, he survived, while myriads of 
the lower forms perished. The singed moth again and 
again dares the flame which tortures it, and at last 
gives its life a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child 
fears the fire, and does not the second time tempt 
the lesson. So also can the efficiency of an individual 
or a nation, as compared with other individuals or 
nations, be determined. The inefficient are those who 
repeat the same error or useless act over and over, 
or else fail to repeat a chance useful act whose repe- 
tition might lead to success. They are unable to learn 
their lesson and be guided by experience. Their past 
does not sufficiently minister to their present, and 
through it direct their future. 

If past experience plays so important a part in our 
welfare, how, then, is it to be conserved so that we 
may secure its benefits? Here, as elsewhere, we find 
the mind and body working in perfect unison and har- 



MENTAL IMAGERY 93 

mony, each doing its part to further the interests of 
both. The results of our past experience may be read 
in both our mental and our physical nature. 

On the physical side past experience is recorded in Physical 
modified structure through the law of habit working of^past"'^ 
on the tissues of the body, and particularly on the experience, 
delicate tissues of the brain and nervous system. This 
is easily seen in its outward aspects. The stooped 
shoulders and bent form of the workman tells a tale 
of physical toil and exposure; the bloodless lips and 
pale face of the victim of the city sweat shop tell of 
foul air, long hours, and insufficient food; the rosy 
cheek and bounding step of childhood, of fresh air, 
good food, and happy play. The modification of the 
nervous system by experience is not so easy to see 
at the first glance; but it is here that the effects are 
the most marked, for nerve cells are the most unstable 
and easily modified of all. Some motor activity large 
or small is performed, in consequence of an activity 
in the nerves and brain, which leaves the cells and 
fibers so modified that the act is repeated more easily 
the second and each succeeding time. Or it may be 
that the act is one of hearing, or seeing, or tasting; 
here as in the other case the cortical activity accom- 
panies the act, and the act is more easily performed 
thereafter. If the external stimulus occurs again as 
it did to produce the act in the first instance, the same 
cortical activity will follow, and the original percep- 
tion will again be repeated. If, however, the cortical 
activity is produced indirectly by means of a nerve 
current coming hy the way of some other cortical cen- Mental re- 
ter, an image is produced ; as when the sound of a per- images! ^^ 
son's name spoken calls up a visual picture of the per- 
son in the mind, or the sight of a certain person calls 



94 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



All our past 
experience 
is poten- 
tially at 
our com- 
mand. 



up the taste of ice cream which we ate together last 
week. In the first case the visual area of the cortex, 
once active at the same time with the auditory area 
connected with the person's name, is easily excited 
again by a current coming by way of the auditory 
center when the name is pronounced; in the second 
case the visual center was active together with the 
taste center, and the excitation of the visual center 
connected with seeing the person easily sets up a 
corresponding activity in the center connected with 
taste. 

Thus we can again experience sights, sounds, tastes, 
and smells which we have known before, without hav- 
ing the stimuli actually present to the senses. In this 
way all our past experience is potentially available to 
the present. All the objects we have seen, it is poten- 
tially possible again to see in the mind's eye without 
being obliged to have the objects before us; all the 
sounds we have heard, all the tastes and smells and 
temperatures we have experienced, we may again have 
presented to our minds in the form of mental images 
without the various stimuli being present to the end 
organs of the various senses. In this way the total 
number of objects in our experience is infinitely mul- 
tiplied ; for many of the things we have seen, or heard, 
or smelled, or tasted, we bannot again have present 
to the senses, and without this power we would never 
get them again. And besides this fact, it would be in- 
convenient to have to go and secure afresh each sen- 
sation or perception every time we need to use it in 
our thought. While habit, then, conserves our past 
experience on the physical side, the image does the 
same thing on the mental side, and each works to sup- 
port and strengthen the other. 



MENTAL IMAGERY 95 

The remainder of the description of images will be images to 
easier to understand, for each of you can know just bylntro^- 
what is meant in every case by appealing to your own spection. 
mind. I beg of you not to think that I am presenting 
something new and strange, a curiosity connected with 
our thinking which has been discovered by scholars 
who have delved more deeply into the matter than we 
can hope to do. Every day — no, more than that, every 
hour and every moment — these images are flitting 
through our minds, forming the large part of our 
stream of consciousness. Says Royce, '' The sensory 
experience and the imagery of any moment, when 
taken together with the state of feeling of that mo- 
ment, constitute the mental material of the moment; 
and that, too, whether we are thinking of the loftiest 
or of the most trivial matters." Let us see whether 
we can turn our attention within and discover some 
of our images in their flight. Let us introspect. 

I know of no better way to proceed than that A simple 
adopted by Francis Galton years ago, when he asked 
the English men of letters and science to think of 
their breakfast tables, and then describe the images 
which appeared. I am about to ask each one of you 
to do the same thing, but I want to warn you before- 
hand that the images will not be so vivid as the sen- 
sory experiences themselves. They will be much 
fainter and more vague, and less clear and definite; 
they will be fleeting, and must be caught on the wing. 
Let each one now recall the dining table as you last 
left it, and then answer questions concerning it like 
the following: 

Can I see clearly in my " mind's eye " the whole The varied 
table as it stood spread before me? Can I see all s?g|eated. 
parts of it equally clearly ? Do I get the snowy white 



96 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



I 



and gloss of the linen? The delicate coloring of the 
china, so that I can see where the pink shades off 
into the white ? The graceful lines and curves of the 
dishes? The sheen of the silver? The brown of the 
toast? The yellow of the cream? The rich red and 
dark green of the bouquet of roses? The sparkle of 
the glassware? Can I again hear the rattle of the 
dishes ? The clink of the spoon against the cup ? The 
moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, 
each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The 
twitter of a bird outside the window ? The tinkle of a 
distant bell ? The chirp of a neighborly cricket ? Can 
I taste clearly the milk? The coffee? The eggs? 
The bacon? The rolls? The butter? The jelly? 
The fruit? Can I get the appetizing odor of the 
coffee? Of the meat? The oranges and bananas? 
The perfume of the lilac bush outside the door ? The 
perfume from a handkerchief newly treated to a 
spray of heliotrope? Can I recall the touch of my 
fingers on the velvety peach? On the smooth skin of 
an apple? On the fretted glassware? The feel of 
the fresh linen? The contact of leather-covered or 
cane-seated chair? Of the freshly donned garment? 
Can I get clearly the temperature of the hot coffee 
in the mouth ? Of the Jiot dish on the hand ? Of the 
ice water? Of the grateful coolness of the breeze 
wafted in through the open window? Can I feel 
again the strain of muscle and joint in passing the 
heavy dish? Can I feel the movement of the jaws 
in chewing the beefsteak? Of the throat and lips in 
talking? Of the chest and diaphragm in laughing? 
Of the muscles in sitting and rising? In hand and 
arm in using knife and fork and spoon? Can I get 
again the sensation of pain which accompanied biting 



MENTAL IMAGERY 97 

on a tender tooth? From the shooting of a drop Pain, 
of acid from the rind of the orange into the eye? 
The chance ache in the head? The pleasant feel- 
ing connected with the exhilaration of a beauti- 
ful morning? The feeling of perfect health? The 
pleasure connected with partaking of a favorite 
food? 

It is more than probable that some of you cannot Power of 
get perfectly clear images in all these lines, certainly v^nS m 
not with equal facility ; for the imagery from any one ^^gQ^'jg"^ 
sense varies greatly from person to person. A cele- 
brated painter was able, after placing his subject in a 
chair and looking at him attentively for a few min- 
utes, to dismiss the subject and paint a perfect like- 
ness of him from the visual image which recurred to 
the artist every time he turned his eyes to the chair 
where the sitter had been placed. On the other hand, 
a young lady, a student in my psychology class, tells 
me that she is never able to recall the looks of her 
mother when she is absent, even if the separation has 
been only for a few moments. She could get an 
image of the form, with the color and cut of the dress, 
but never the features. One person may be able to 
recall a large part of a concert through his auditory 
imagery, and another almost none. When Mozart was 
fourteen years old he listened to Allegri 's ' ' Miserere, ' ' 
given in St. Peter's at Rome. The Romish Church 
had so jealously guarded this piece of music that 
never a line of it had been written out, on pain of 
excommunication. Young Mozart listened, silently 
went home and retired, and as silently arose after the 
family had fallen asleep, and then through the night 
reproduced, note for note, all of the wonderful and 
intricate piece of music, and this without an error. 



98 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

On the other hand, a well-known pastor tells me that 
he is unable to recall the difference between '* Old 
Hundred " and " Yankee Doodle," and almost un- 
able to distinguish the difference when they are 
played. 

Likewise, the imagery from the different senses 
varies greatly in the same person. This would natu- 
rally be the case ; for not all types of experience enter 
equally into our minds, since the consciousness is se- 
lective in the objects of its attention. A high degree 
of attention means, on the physical side, great tension 
in the nerve cells connected with the object of atten- 
tion, and this high degree of activity in the cells ren- 
ders them doubly ready to perform a like activity 
again. But this is only a physiological statement of 
the fact that the particular type of imagery connected 
with this cortical center will be easily produced. 
Probably all of us have at some time had some experi- 
ence, some crisis in our life, which stands out vividly 
above any other experience which we can recall. 
Even little irrelevant details were so impressed upon 
us that they stick in our mind now, after the lapse of 
years, as if they had occurred but yesterday. The 
experience, whatever it was, which gives us this vivid 
imagery, occurred under a state of extremely high 
tension in the nerve centers — or, in other words, of a 
high degree of attention. Our perceptions were par- 
ticularly clear and pronounced. Moreover, the ex- 
perience was of such a type, and so closely related to 
our life and its interests, that we have often recalled 
the circumstances since, and lived the occurrences over 
again, until every phase of it has been dwelt upon a 
thousand times. 

This illustration, then, gives us the clew to the types 



MENTAL IMAGERY 



99 



of imagery which will prevail in our thinking. Those Predomi- 
who most easily attend to the visual in their experi- typS^ 
ence, and who oftenest recall the visual in their 
thought, will find the visual predominating in their 
imagery; those who are most prone to dwell upon 
the auditory and who use it most will find auditory 
imagery prevailing, while those who are accustomed 
to many delicate adjustments and live a life of motor 
activity will find their imagery running to the motor, 
etc. Now it happens that more of our experience on 
the sensory side is connected with vision than with 
any of the other sensations ; hence, most people have a 
predominance of visual imagery, although some are 
clearly of the audile or the motor type. 

This is no reason, however, why those who may be Value of a 
strong in one type should neglect the other types, of cfear"^^ 
Binet well says that the man who has not every type ^^^s^^y- 
of imagery almost equally well developed is only the 
fraction of a man. The one who lacks the ability to 
recall his sensory experiences readily and clearly in 
the form of visual, auditory, tactual, taste, smell, and 
all the other kinds of images, in this far lacks the 
materials for thinking; and the one who lacks the 
images connected with a large variety of movements 
lacks the power to put his thoughts into acts. And, 
indeed, not only shall we be unable to think well our- 
selves without a good stock of images from all the 
senses, but we shall even be unable to interpret the 
thought of others who employ imagery in their speak- 
ing or writing. Halleck shows clearly, in his " Edu- 
cation of the Central Nervous System," from which 
I shall make several quotations, how freely the great 
writers use all possible types of imagery in their 



100 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Shakespeare, describing certain beautiful music, ap- 
peals to the sense of smell to make himself understood : 

... it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor! 

Lady Macbeth cries: 

Here's the smell of the blood still: 

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 

Milton has Eve say of her dream of the fatal apple : 

. . . The pleasant sav'ry smell 

So quickened appetite, that I, methought, 

Could not but taste. 

How utterly impossible for one who has not a deli- 
cate sense of smell and a large stock of images from 
this sense to interpret these lines ! They will be to him 
but a jumble of words, and he is likely to decide that 
poetry is nothing but foolishness. 

Likewise with the sense of touch : 

... I take thy hand, this hand 

As soft as dove's down, and as white as it. 

Or from Comus: 

Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head. 
That bends not as I tread. 



Imagine a person devoid of delicate tactile imagery, 
with senseless finger tips and leaden footsteps, under- 
taking to interpret these exquisite lines ! 



MENTAL IMAGERY 101 

Shakespeare thus appeals to the muscular imagery: 

At last, a little shaking of mine arm 

And thrice his head thus waving up and down, 

He raised a sigh so piteous and profound 

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk 

And end his being. 

Many passages like the following appeal to the 
temperature images : 

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
Thou dost not bite so nigh 
As benefits forgot ! 

To one whose auditory imagery is meager, the fol- 
lowing beautiful lines are nothing but a senseless 
jingle of words: 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bankf 
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

While the plowman near at hand 
Whistles o'er the furrowed land 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe 
And the mower whets his scythe. 

Who that has not stood under the open sky and 
watched the stars come out, and retained a vivid 
impression of the experience, can understand when 
Longfellow says: 

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, 
Blossomed the lovely stars ; the forget-me-nots of the angels! 

All literature is so full of visual imagery that one 
can hardly find a couplet that is not filled with it. 



102 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

Now Morn her rosy steps in th' eastern clime 
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl. 

The cowslips tall her pensioners be; 

In their gold coats spots you see — ' 

These be rubies, fairy favours, 

In those freckles live their savours. 

I must go seek some dewdrops here, 

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

And so one might go on quoting, not only from 
poetry, but from prose as well, and take in history, 
geography, science, mathematics, philosophy, and all 
the rest, and the result would be the same, only dif- 
fering in degree. In them all, the points grasped by 
our thought and held by our memory, or used by our 
imagination, are precisely these images of which we 
have been speaking. 

Nor are images less important on the motor side. 
Movements do not just happen. No muscle acts ex- 
cept under the compulsion of a motor-nerve current. 
But the only way to secure these motor-nerve currents 
is either directly from sensory stimuli or else indi- 
rectly from sensory centers by means of images. 
"Were it not for images serving as stimuli for motor 
acts, these could never be more complex than our im- 
mediate sensory experiences or the habits growing out 
of them. Manifestly this would give us so circum- 
scribed a range of activities that any progress in liv- 
ing would be impossible. The part of sensory expe- 
rience coming from the immediately present objects 
could no more serve as the stimulus to efficient acts 
than it alone can give us efficient thinking. In both 
cases mental imagery must lend its aid to bring our 
past experience to the help of the present. 



MENTAL IMAGERY 103 

It is evident, then, that the youth who seeks to de- A good 
velop a good mind, capable of well-balanced thought, images fun- 
ready memory, and good imagination, must have first f ^"^n ^^^^ 
of all a good stock of imagery ready at his command ; veiopment. 
and if he is to be efficient in his motor acts as well 
as his mental, he must meet the same requirement. A 
word on the means of developing our imagery will, 
consequently, not be out of place. 

In the first place, we may put down as an absolute Deveiop- 
requisite such an environment pf sensory stimuli as Simages. 
will tempt every sense to he awake and at its best, 
that we may be led into a large acquaintance with the 
objects of our material environment. No one's stock 
of sensory images is greater than the sum total of his 
sensory experiences. No one ever has images of sights, 
or sounds, or tastes, or smells which he has never ex- 
perienced. Likewise, he must have had the fullest 
and freest possible liberty in motor activities. For 
not only is the motor act itself made possible through 
the office of imagery, but the motor act clarifies and 
makes useful the images themselves. The boy who 
has actually made a table, or a desk, or a box has ever 
afterward a different and a better image of one of 
these objects than before ; so also when he has owned 
and ridden a bicycle, his image of this machine will 
have a different significance from that of the image 
founded upon the visual perception alone of the wheel 
he longingly looked at through the store window or 
in the other boy's dooryard. 

But sensory experiences and motor responses alone Thein- 
are not enough, though they are the basis of good fr^quTnt 
imagery. There must he frequent recall. The sunset ^'^^aii- 
may have been never so brilliant, and the music never 
so entrancing; but if they are never thought of and 



104 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



We com- 

Erehend 
est in 
images 
with 

which we 
are famil- 



dwelt upon after they were first experienced, little will 
remain of them after a very short time. It is by re- 
peating them often in experience through imagery 
that they become fixed, so that they stand ready to do 
our bidding when we need next to use them. 

To richness of experience and frequency of the re- 
call of our images we must add one more factor; 
namely, that of their reconstruction or working over. 
Few if any images are exact recalls of former per- 
cepts of objects. Indeed, such would be neither pos- 
sible nor desirable. The images which we recall are 
recalled for a purpose, or in view of some future 
activity, and hence must be selective, or made up of 
the elements of several or many former related images. 
Thus the boy who wishes to construct a box without a 
pattern to follow recalls the images of numerous boxes 
he may have seen, and from them all he has a new 
image made over from many former percepts and 
images, and this new image serves him as a working 
model. In this way he not only gets a copy which 
he can follow to make his box, but he also secures a 
new product in the form of an image different from 
any he ever had before, and is therefore by so much 
the richer. It is this working over of our stock of 
old images into new and richer and more suggestive 
ones that constitutes the essence of constructive im- 
agination. 

The facts we have just been considering are of 
vital importance in education. No one will ever know 
how many children, whose minds are of the audile 
type, have been wrongly accused of dullness because 
they could not comprehend the description of a scene 
in nature or a construction in geometry which was 
given in visual terms. It is impossible for one whose 



MENTAL IMAGERY 105 

mind is lacking in auditory imagery to appreciate 
fully a description necessitating a large proportion 
of images of this type, or one whose images are de- 
ficient on the motor side to enter fully into the account 
of an athletic event. To be obliged to deal with im- 
agery to which we are not accustomed in our daily 
thinking is like listening to the speaking of a foreign 
language when we do not know enough of its words 
to enable us to interpret its thought. 

On the other hand, the more types of imagery into But the 

p n • •. more forms 

which we can put our thought, the more luUy is it of imagery 
ours. The spelling lesson needs not only to be taken ^e pS'iu^ 
in through the eye, that we may retain a visual image ^jj^u ^!f ^^' 
of the words, but also to be recited orally, so that 
the ear may furnish an auditory image, and the organs 
of speech a motor image of the correct forms ; and it 
needs also to be written, and thus given into the keep- 
ing of the hand, which finally needs most of all to 
know it and retain it. The reading lesson should be 
taken in through both the eye and the ear, and then 
expressed by means of voice and gesture in as full 
and complete a way as possible, that it may be asso- 
ciated with motor images. The geography lesson needs 
not only to be read, but to be drawn, or molded, or con- 
structed. The history lesson should be made to ap- 
peal to every possible form of imagery. The arith- 
metic lesson must be not only computed, but measured, 
weighed, and pressed into actual service. Thus we 
might carry the illustration into every line of educa- 
tion and experience, and the same truth holds. What 
ive desire to comprehend completely and retain well, 
ive must apprehend through all available senses and 
conserve in every possible type of image and form of 
expression. 



106 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

Imagine a three-inch cube. Paint it. Then saw it up 
into inch cubes, leaving them all standing in the original 
form. 

How many inch cubes have paint on three faces? How 
many on two faces? How many on one face? How many 
have no paint on them? Answer all these questions by 
referring to your imagery alone. 

Try often to recall images in the various sensory lines; 
determine in what classes of images you are least proficient 
and try to improve in these lines. 

How is the singing teacher able, after his class has sung 
through several scores, to tell that they are flatting? 

Study your imagery carefully for a few days to see whether 
you can discover your predominating type of imagery. 

Devise a test similar to the first one mentioned above, 
based on connecting the mid-points of an equilateral triangle. 
Discover how many figures of different kinds result. 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Royce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chapter VI. 

Stout, " Groundwork of Psychology," Chapter X. 

Halleck, " The Education of the Central Nervous Sys- 
tem," Chapter VII. 

Schaeffer "Thinking and Learning to Think," Chapter 
XII. 

Sully, "Studies of Childhood," Chapter II. 



in memory. 



CHAPTER VIII 

MEMORY 

Now that you come to think of it, you can recall what is 
perfectly well that Columbus discovered America in 
1492 ; that your house is painted white ; that it rained 
a week ago to-day. But where were these once-known 
facts, now remembered so easily, while they were out of 
your mind ? Where did they stay while you were not 
thinking of them? The common answer is, " Stored 
away in my memory." Yet no one believes that the 
memory is a warehouse of facts which we pack away 
there when we for a time have no use for them, as we 
store away our old furniture. The truth is that the 
simple question I asked you is by no means an easy one, 
and I will answer it myself by asking you an easier one : 
As we sit with the sunlight streaming into our room, 
where is the darkness which filled it last night ? And 
where will all this light be at midnight to-night? 
Answer these questions, and the ones I asked about 
your remembered facts will be answered. While it 
is true that, regardless of the conditions in our little 
room, darkness still exists wherever there is no light, 
and light still exists wherever there is no darkness, 
yet for this particular room there is no darkness when 
the sun shines in, and there is no light ivhen the room 
is filled with darkness. So in the case of remembered 
fact. Although the fact that Columbus discovered 
America some four hundred years ago, that your house 

107 



108 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The physi- 
cal basis 
of memory. 



How we 
remember. 



is of a white color, that it rained a week ago to-day, 
exists as a fact regardless of whether your minds think 
of these things at all, yet the truth remains as be- 
fore : for the particular mind which remembers these 
things, the facts did not exist while they were out of 
the mind. 

It is not the remembered fact which is retained, 

BUT THE POWER TO REPRODUCE THE FACT WHEN WE 
REQUIRE IT. 

The power to reproduce a once-known fact depends 
ultimately on the brain. This is not hard to under- 
stand if we go back a little and consider that brain 
activity was concerned in every perception we have 
ever had, and in every fact we have ever known. In- 
deed, it was through a certain neural activity of the 
cortex that you were able originally to know that 
Columbus discovered America, that your house is 
white, and that it rained on a day in the past. With- 
out this cortical activity, these facts would have ex- 
isted just as truly, but you would never have known 
them. Without this neural activity in the brain there 
is no consciousness, and to it we must look for the 
recurrence in consciousness of remembered facts, as 
well as for those which appear for the first time. 

Now, if we are to have a once-known fact repeated 
in consciousness, or in other words remembered, what 
we must do on the physiological side is to provide for 
a repetition of the neural activity which was at first 
responsible for the fact's appearing in consciousness. 
The mental accompaniment of the repeated activity 
is the memory. Thus, as memory is the approximate 
repetition of once-experienced mental states or facts, 
together tvith the recognition of their belonging to our 
past, so it is accomplished by an approximate repeti- 



MEMORY 109 

tion of the once-performed neural process in the cortex 
which originally accompanied these states or facts. 

The repetition of the neural activity in the cortex There- 
is made possible through the law of habit working neural 
in the nervous system. Here, as elsewhere, habit ^epend^ 
makes an activity once performed more easy of per- on law of 
formance each succeeding time. Through this law 
a neural activity once performed tends to be repeated ; 
or, in other words, a fact once known in consciousness 
tends to be remembered. That so large a part of our 
past is lost in oblivion, and out of the reach of our 
memory, is probably much more largely due to a fail- 
ure to recall than to retain. We say that we have 
forgotten a fact or a name which we cannot recall, 
try as hard as we may; yet surely all have had the 
experience of a long-striven-for fact suddenly appear- 
ing in our memory when we had given it up and no 
longer had use for it. It was retained all the time, 
else it never could have come back at all. 

An aged man of my acquaintance lay on his death- Retention 
bed. In his childhood he had first learned to speak caii.^^" 
German; but, moving with his family when he was 
eight or nine years of age to an English-speaking com- 
munity, he had lost his ability to speak German, and 
had been unable for a third of a century to carry on 
a conversation in his mother tongue. Yet during the 
last days of his sickness he lost almost wholly the 
power to use the English language, and spoke fluently 
in German. During all these years his brain paths 
had retained the power to reproduce the forgotten 
words, even though for so long a time the words could 
not be recalled. James quotes a still more striking 
case of a young woman who was seized with a fever, 
and during her delirious ravings was heard talking 



110 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. She herself could 
neither read nor write, and the priests said she was 
possessed of a devil. But a physician unraveled the 
mystery. When the girl was nine years of age, a 
pastor, who was a noted scholar, had taken her into 
his home as a servant, and she had remained there 
until his death. During this time she had daily heard 
him read aloud from his books in these languages. 
Her brain had indelibly retained the record made upon 
it, although for years she could not have recalled a 
sentence, if, indeed, she had ever been able to do so. 

There is, however, a very great difference between 
brains as to the actual possibility of recall through 
them. Some brains are ' ' like wax to receive and like 
marble to retain ' ' ; with them every little fact which 
enters experience is kept seemingly without effort and 
recalled at will. These are the brains in which great 
possibilities reside in the way of an efficient memory, 
and which, if rightly used in remembering, will prove 
a priceless boon to their owners. Other brains receive 
impressions much more slowly, but retain well what 
has once been fully given into their keeping. Much 
study and many repetitions may be necessary in order 
to get the facts well established; but once completely 
in the mind, they are there to stay. These brains are 
of the steady, plodding kind, so far as the memory is 
concerned, but will do their possessors faithful service 
if they are well trained. Still other brains receive im- 
pressions but slowly, and retain them poorly. These 
brains belong to those who must pore over the lesson 
for a long time, no matter how faithful the work and 
efficient the methods of study, and from whom — more 
discouraging still — facts slip easily away, even after 
they have once been mastered. Heroic effort will be 



MEMORY 111 

required to make up for the handicap which such a 
brain is to its owner. But whichever type of brain 
be yours, the fact remains that your brain is the auto- 
matic register of all your thoughts and acts, each of 
which leaves it so modified that the thought or act 
tends inevitably to be repeated. 

With this explanation of retention we may say, then, The factors 
that what we can actually remember must (1) be memor^y.*" 
retained and (2) be capable of recall. We may also 
add a third factor, recognition; we must know the 
recalled fact as an old friend, as having been known 
before, as having belonged to our past. 

But what are the forms in which the memory pre- Thema- 
sents the past to us? What shapes do these forms memory 
take as they appear 1 What is the elemental material i^^^g^^- 
with which memory deals ? In the light of our discus- 
sion upon mental imagery, and with the aid of a little 
introspection the answer is easy. I ask you to remem- 
ber your home, and at once a visual image of the 
familiar house, with its well-known rooms and their 
characteristic furnishings, comes to your mind. I ask 
you to remember the last concert you attended, or 
the chorus of birds you heard recently in the woods; 
and there comes a flood of images, partly visual, but 
largely auditory, from the melodies you heard. Or 
I ask you to remember the feast of which you partook 
yesterday, and gustatory and olfactory images are 
prominent among the others which appear. And so 
I might keep on until I had covered the whole range of 
your memory ; and, whether I ask you for the simple, 
trivial experiences of your past, for the tragic or cru- 
cial experiences, or for the most abstruse and abstract 
facts which you know and can recall, the case is the 
same : whatever memory presents to you comes in the 



112 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

form of images of the experiences of your past. These 
are the only stuff which memory has, the only terms 
which it can command. 

Sometimes we are so intent on the meaning of what 
we remember that we do not notice the image in which 
it comes, just as we often fail to notice the form and 
stationery of a letter which brings us important news. 
Or it may be that we have never learned to look for our 
images, and hence their presence escapes us, or rather 
we fail to recognize them for what they are. But they 
are always present. 

We do not all remember what we call the same fact 
in like images. When you remembered that Columbus 
discovered America in 1492, some of you had an image 
of Columbus the mariner standing on the deck of his 
ship, as the old picture shows him ; and accompanying 
this image was a feeling of * ' long agoness. ' ' Others, 
in recalling the same fact, had an image of the coast on 
which he landed, and perchance felt the rocking of 
the boat and heard it scraping on the sand as it neared 
the shore. And still others saw on the printed page 
the words stating that Columbus discovered America 
in 1492. And so in an infinite variety of images we 
may remember what we call the same fact, though 
of course the fact is not really the same fact to any 
two of us, nor to any one of us when it comes to us 
on different occasions in different images. The fact 
we remember is finally just what the image presents 
to us, together with our interpretation of it, and noth- 
ing more nor less. Hence it is very easy to see that 
our memory is limited by the stock of images which 
we can command. 

Let us see whether we can discover how the recall 
of these images is possible, and what laws they follow 



MEMORY 



113 



in their return. Why does the name or the fact which Recall 
eludes us to-day come unbidden to the mind to- i^^J^ 
morrow? Why does a fragment of a trivial expe- 
rience which occurred a decade ago slip into the mind 
ahead of the thought which we are pursuing? Why, 
as we dream away an hour, do our memories take - 
some particular direction rather than one of a thou- 
sand other directions which they might equally well 
take? Such experiences as these, which are common 
to every mind, tend to make us think that memory 
not only fails to follow any law, but, on occasions at 
least, directly violates all law. A little closer exami- 
nation will show that such is not the case, but that 
the run of images through our mental stream follows 
laws as fixed and inevitable as those which control 
the earth in its orbit or the tides in their ebb and 
flow. 

Retention, like recall, rests on the laws of habit. To 
see that this is the case, it will be necessary for us to go 
back to the fact that recall depends on securing a 
repetition of the original neural activity in the cor- 
tex. Now, if we can find that the exciting of this 
activity from center to center in the brain as we pro- 
ceed from fact to fact in the memory follows some 
law, then we shall have established the law for se- 
quence in the memory. The following laws of brain 
physiology have been well established : 

1. Brain areas which are active together at the 
same time tend to establish associative paths, so that 
when one of them is again active the other also is 
thrown into activity. 

2. The more frequently a certain cortical activity 
occurs, the more easily its repetition is brought about. 

3. The more recently certain brain centers have been 



Laws 

underlying 

memory. 



114 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The law of 
association. 



How asso- 
ciation 
comes 
about. 



engaged in activity, the more easily they are thrown 
into activity. 

4. The more intense the activity, the more easily it 
is repeated. 

The first of these laws is responsible for what the 
psychologist calls " association of ideas," or, to put 
it more simply, for the fact that one image in memory 
calls up another, and this another, and so on, giving 
us thus an unbroken series of remembered facts, so 
that our images flow in a continuous stream. It is as 
if each image, like a man in a relay race, touched 
hands with the next ahead before dropping out, and 
from the momentum gained accompanied the substi- 
tute a little distance on the way. Each image occupy- 
ing at a given moment the chief point in our mental 
stream is selected out of a hundred others which might 
have been taken, and it will in turn touch hands with 
another which is to take its place, picking it out of a 
multitude of available images. 

Let us see from a very simple illustration how this 
comes about. Suppose you are passing an orchard 
and see a tree loaded with tempting apples. You hesi- 
tate, then climb the fence, pick an apple and eat it, 
hearing the owner's dog bark as you leave the place. 
The accompanying diagram will illustrate roughly the 
centers of the" cortex which were involved in the act, 
and the association fibers which connect them. (See 
Fig. 16.) Now let us see how you may afterward 
remember the circumstance through association. Let 
us suppose that a week later you are seated at your 
dining table, and that you begin to eat an apple whose 
flavor reminds you of the one which you plucked from 
the tree. From this start how may the entire circum- 
stance be recalled? Remembering that the cortical 



MEMORY 



115 



centers connected with the sight of the apple tree, with 
our thoughts about it, with our movements in getting 
the apple, and with hearing the dog bark, were all 
active together with the taste center, and hence tend 
to be thrown into activity again from its activity, it 
is easy to see that we may (1) get a visual image of 
the apple tree and its fruit from a current over G-V; 
(2) the thoughts, emotions, or deliberations which we 




Fig. 18. 



had on the former occasion may again recur to us 
from a current over G-T ; (3) we may get an image 
of our movements in climbing the fence and picking 
the apple from a current over G-M ; or (4) we may 
get an auditory image of the barking of the dog from 
a current over G-A. Indeed, we are sure to get some 
one or more of these unless the paths are blocked in 
some way, or our attention leads off in some other 
direction. Which of these we get first, which of the 
images the taste image calls to take its place as it 
drops out of consciousness, will depend, other things 
being equal, on which center was most keenly active 
in the original situation. (See the fourth law.) If, at 
9 



116 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

the time we were eating the stolen fruit, our thoughts 
were keenly self -accusing for taking the apples with- 
out permission, then the current will probably dis- 
charge through the path G-T, and we shall recall these 
thoughts and their accompanying feelings. But if it 
chances that the barking of the dog frightened us 
badly, then more likely the discharge from the taste 
center will be along the path G-A, and we shall get 
the auditory image of the dog's barking, which in 
turn may call up a visual image of his savage appear- 
ance over A-V. It is clear, however, that, given any 
one of the elements of the entire situation back, the 
rest are potentially possible to us, and anyone may 
serve as a " cue " to call up all the rest. Whether, 
given the starting point, we get them all, depends 
solely on whether the paths are sufficiently open be- 
tween them for the current to discharge between them, 
granting that the first experience made sufficient im- 
pression to be retained. 
Association Since this simple illustration may be made infinitely 
complex by means of the millions of fibers which con- 
nect every center in the cortex with every other cen- 
ter, and since, in passing from one experience to an- 
other in the round of our daily activities, these various 
areas are all involved in an endless chain of activities 
so intimately related that each one can finally lead to 
all the others, we have here the machinery both of 
retention and of recall — the mechanism by which our 
past may be made to serve the present through being 
reproduced in the form of memory images. Through 
this machinery we are unable to escape our past, 
whether it be good or bad ; for both the good and the 
bad alike are brought back to us through its operations. 
We are simply ''pieces of associating machinery.'' 



unifies our 
experiences 



MEMORY 117 

We are ' ' at the mercy of our associations. ' ' We may The law of 
form certain lines of interest to guide our thought, fnexoraWe! 
and attention may in some degree direct it, but one's 
mental make-up is, after all, largely dependent on the 
character of his associations. Evil thoughts, evil 
memories, evil imaginations — ^these all come about 
through the association of unworthy or impure images 
along with the good in our stream of thought. We 
may try to forget the base deed and banish it forever 
from our thinking, but lo ! in an unguarded moment 
the nerve current shoots into the old path, and the 
impure thought flashes into the mind, unsought and 
unwelcomed. Every young man who thinks he must 
indulge in a little sowing of wild oats before he settles 
down to a correct life, and so deals in unworthy 
thoughts and deeds, is putting a mortgage on his 
future; for he will find the inexorable machinery of 
his nervous system grinding the hated images of such 
things back into his mind as surely as the mill returns 
to the sack of the miller what he feeds into the hopper. 
He may refuse to harbor these thoughts, but he can 
no more hinder their seeking admission to his mind 
than he can prevent the tramp from knocking at his 
door. He may drive such images from his mind the 
moment they are discovered, and indeed is guilty if 
he does not ; but not taking offense at this rebuff, the 
unwelcome thought again seeks admission. 

The only protection against the return of the unde- The neces- 
sirable associations is to choose lines of thought as right think- 
little related to them as possible. But even then, do ^^^' 
the best we may, an occasional ' ' connection ' ' will be 
set up, we know not how, and the unwelcome image 
stands staring us in the face, as the corpse of Eugene 
Aram's victim confronted him at every turn though he 



118 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



What con- 
stitutes a 
good 
memory. 



thought it safely buried. A minister of my acquaint- 
ance tells me that in the holiest moments of his most 
exalted thought, images rise in his mind which he 
loathes, and from which he recoils in horror. Not 
only does he drive them away at once, but he seeks to 
lock and bar the door against them by firmly resolving 
that he will never think of them again. But alas ! that 
is beyond his control. The tares have been sown 
among the wheat, and will persist along with it until 
the end. In his boyhood these images were given into 
the keeping of his brain cells, and they are only being 
faithful to their trust. 

Nor is the inexorableness of our associations to be 
deplored, for this has its good side as well as its bad. 
Only through association is memory possible at all. 
It is not the fact of association which is to be dreaded, 
but its material. Thus the practical problem for each 
of us to consider is the character of the stuff which 
we shall give over to the keeping of our brains. In 
other words, we are to keep clear of experiences whose 
images we shall not be willing to confront in later 
time and make our companions. Paul was illustrating 
this truth when he wrote to the men of Philippi, 
' ' Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there 
be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
these things." For, after all is said and done, noth- 
ing but right thinking will make possible associations 
in our thinking which will leave no sting or stain. 

Let us next inquire what are the qualities which 
enter into what we call a good memory. The mer- 
chant or politician will say, '' Ability to remember 



MEMORY 119 

well people ^s faces and names "; the teacher of 
history, *' The ability to recall readily dates and 
events ' ' ; the teacher of mathematics, ' ' The power to 
recall mathematical formulae "; the hotel waiter, 
*' The ability to keep in mind half a dozen orders at 
a time ' ' ; the manager of a corporation, ' ' The ability 
to recall all the necessary details connected with the 
running of the concern." While these answers are 
very divergent, yet they may all be true for the par- 
ticular person testifying; for out of them all there 
emerges this common truth, that the best memory is 
the one which best serves its possessor. That is, one's 
memory not only must be ready and exact, but must 
produce the right kind of material; it must bring to 
us what we need in our thinking. A very easy cor- 
ollary at once grows out of this fact ; namely, that in 
order to have the memory return to us the right kind 
of matter, we must store it with the right kind of 
images, for the memory cannot give back to us any- 
thing which we have not first given into its keeping. 

The best memory is not necessarily the one which The good 
impartially repeats the largest number of facts of our does not 
past experience. Everyone has many experiences J-^caTrevery 
which he never needs to have reproduced in memory ; fact of ex- 

. penence. 

useful enough they may have been at the tmie, but 
wholly useless and irrelevant later. They have served 
their purpose, and should henceforth slumber in 
oblivion. They would be but so much rubbish and 
lumber if they could be recalled. Everyone has 
surely met that particular type of bore whose memory 
is so faithful to details that no incident in the story 
he tells, no matter how trivial, is ever omitted in the 
recounting. His associations work in such a tireless 
round of minute succession, without ever being able 



120 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

to take a jump or a short cut, that he is powerless to 
separate the wheat froin the chaff; so he dumps the 
whole indiscriminate mass into our long-suffering ears. 
Dr. Carpenter tells of a member of Parliament who 
could repeat long legal documents and acts of Parlia- 
ment after one reading. When he was congratulated 
on his remarkable gift, he replied that, instead of 
being an advantage to him it was often a source of 
great inconvenience, because when he wished to recol- 
lect anything in a document he had read, he could 
do it only by repeating the whole from the beginning 
up to the point which he wished to recall. Maudsley 
says that the kind of memory which enables a per- 
son '* to read a photographic copy of former impres- 
sions with his mind's eye is not, indeed, commonly 
associated with high intellectual power, ' ' and gives as 
a reason that such a mind is hindered by the very 
wealth of material furnished by the memory from 
discerning the relations between separate facts upon 
which judgment and reasoning depend. It is likewise 
a common source of surprise among teachers that 
many of the pupils who could outstrip their class- 
mates in learning and memory do not turn out to be 
able men. But this, says Whately, " is as reasonable 
as to wonder that a cistern if filled should not be a 
perpetual fountain." It is possible for one to be so 
lost in a tangle of trees that he cannot see the woods. 
A good It is not, then, mere re-presentation of facts that 

disShmna- constitutes a good memory. The pupil who can repro- 
*^^®- duce a history lesson by the page has not necessarily 

so good a memory as the one who remembers fewer 
facts, but sees the relations between those remembered, 
and hence is able to choose what he will remember. 
Memory must be discriminative. A vast part of what 



MEMORY 121 

passes in our thought must be forgotten, needs to be 
forgotten ; its recall but enqumbers the mind and hin- 
ders thought. The memory must fasten on that which 
is important for us, and keep that for us. Therefore 
we can agree that ** the art of remembering is the art 
of thinking/^ Discrimination must select the impor- 
tant for us out of our mental stream, and these im- 
ages must be associated with as many others as pos- 
sible which are already well fixed in memory, and 
hence are sure of recall when needed. In this way the 
old will always serve as a cue to call up the new. It 
is for this reason that it pays in studying history to 
group the events around some well-known date or 
event which we are sure to remember. In this way we 
get them associated with a safe cue. 

And not only must memory, if it is to be a good 
memory, omit the generally worthless, or trivial, or 
irrelevant, and supply the generally useful, signifi- 
cant, and relevant, but it must in some degree be a 
specialized memory. It must minister to the par- 
ticular needs and requirements of its owner. Small 
consolation to you if you are a Latin teacher, and are 
able to call up the binomial theorem or the date of 
the fall of Constantinople when you are in dire need 
of a conjugation or a declension which eludes you. 
It is much better for the merchant and politician to 
have a good memory for names and faces than to be 
able to repeat the succession of English monarchs from 
Alfred the Great to Edward VII, and not to be able 
to tell John Smith from Tom Brown. It is much 
more desirable for the lawyer to be able to remember 
the necessary details of his case than to be able to 
recall all the various athletic records of the year ; and 
so on. In order to be a good memory for us, our 



122 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



memory must be faithful in dealing with the ma- 
terial which constitutes the needs of our vocations. 
Our memory may, and should, bring to us many things 
outside of our immediate vocations, else our lives will 
be narrow; but its chief concern and most accurate 
work must be along the path of our everyday require- 
ments at its hands. And this works out well in con- 
nection with the physiological laws which were stated 
a little while since, providing that our vocations are 
along the line of our interests. For the things with 
which we work daily, and in which we are interested, 
will be often thought of together, and hence will 
become well associated. They will be frequently re- 
called, and hence more easily remembered; they will 
be vividly experienced as the inevitable result of in- 
terest, and this goes far to insure recall. 

It follows from our statement, I think, that im- 
provement in the memory may come both from the 
side of retention and from that of recall. It may be 
true, as James says, that our native retentiveness is 
unchangeable. Our nervous systems are given us 
through heredity, and we are neither to be blamed nor 
praised for what they are. But we may, nevertheless, 
use such methods of recording our facts as to insure 
their retention or else their fading out. 

If, at the time the fact is recorded, the nerve cells 
are in a state of high tension — which is but another 
way of saying, if the mind is in a high degree of con- 
centration and the impression vivid — the retention is 
relatively secure. It is much more secure than it could 
be made by many mere repetitions of the fact in a 
lifeless and inane way. If, further, the fact is re- 
corded when the nervous system is in good *' tone," 
not exhausted from overfatigue and not weakened 



MEMORY 123 

from insufficient nourishment, then we have fortified 
the memory all we can on the retention side. What- 
ever else is done must be accomplished by making 
more certain the recall. 

It is hardly necessary to say that where retention Right 
is lacking there can be no recall. On the other hand, of record- 
there is no doubt that the brain retains many facts ^^g facts, 
which are never recalled, simply because they have 
formed no associations, and hence have nothing to 
bring them back. This gives another hint as to our 
method of recording if we wish to insure recall. The 
new fact is to be connected with just as many related 
old facts as possible; and these, themselves sure of 
recall, will serve as cues for the new when we require 
it in memory. In this way our knowledge is formed 
into a logical chain, the new interlinked with the old, 
so that the recurrence of one part in the mind makes 
possible the whole. Indeed, this is the only right way 
to remember facts which have logical relations, and 
which we wish to make a part of our permanent body 
of usable knowledge. Any other method makes the 
recall depend on artificial or arbitrary cues, and the 
fact remembered never becomes a vital part of our 
thinking. 

It is the truth of this statement which makes The effect 
** cramming " so poor a method of learning. If this ming. 
method of study would yield as valuable permanent 
results, it would be by far the most sensible and eco- 
nomic method to use ; for under the stress of necessity 
we often are able to accomplish results much faster 
than when no pressure is resting upon us. The dif- 
ficulty is, however, that the results are not permanent ; 
the facts learned do not have time to seek out and link 
themselves to well-established associates ; learned in an 



124 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

hour, their retention is as ephemeral as the applica- 
tion which gave them to us. Facts which are needed 
but temporarily and which cannot become a part of 
our body of permanent knowledge may profitably be 
learned by cramming. The lawyer needs many details 
for the case which he is trying, which not only are 
valueless to him as soon as the case is decided, but 
would positively be in his way. He may profitably 
cram such facts. But those facts which are to become 
a permanent part of his mental equipment, such as 
the fundamental principles of law, he cannot cram. 
These he must have in a logical chain which will 
not leave their recall dependent upon a chance cue. 
Crammed facts may serve us during a recitation or 
an examination, but they never really become a part 
of us. Nothing can take the place of the logical pla- 
cing of facts if they are to be remembered with facil- 
ity, and be usable in thinking when recalled. 
Remem- But after all this is taken into consideration there 

laTJdlacts. still remain a large number of facts which refuse to 
fit into any connection or logical system. Or, if they 
do belong with some system, their connection is not 
very close, and we have more need for the few indi- 
vidual facts than for the system as a whole. Hence 
we must have some means of remembering such facts 
other than by -connecting them with their logical asso- 
ciations. Such facts as may be typified by the multi- 
plication table, certain dates, events, names, numbers, 
errands, and engagements of various kinds — all these 
need to be remembered accurately and quickly when 
the occasion for them arises. We must be able to re- 
call them with facility, so that the occasion for them 
will not have passed by before we can secure them 
and we not have failed to do our part because of the 



MEMORY 125 

lapse. With facts of this type the means of secur- 
ing a good memory are the same as in the case of 
logical memory, except that we must of necessity fore- 
go the linking to naturally related associates. We 
can, however, take advantage of the three laws which 
have been given: (1) Until the facts are thoroughly 
learned they must be recalled frequently, so that 
(2) they shall always be recent, and (3) they must be 
recorded under a high state of attention. If these 
methods are used faithfully, then we have done what 
we can in the way of insuring the recall of facts of 
this type, unless we associate them with some artifi- 
cial cue, such as tying a thread around our finger to 
remember an errand, or learning the multiplication 
table by singing it. We are not to be too ready to 
excuse ourselves, however, if we have forgotten to 
mail the letter or deliver the message ; for our atten- 
tion may have been very lax when we recorded the 
direction in the first place, and we may never have 
taken the trouble to think of the matter between the 
time it was given into our keeping and the time we 
were to perform the errand. 

Many ingenious devices have been invented to assist Mnemonic 
the memory. No doubt each one of you has some way ^^^*^^ 
of your own of remembering certain things committed 
to you, or some much-needed fact which has a tendency 
to elude you. You may not tie the traditional string 
around your finger or place your watch in the wrong 
pocket; but if not, you have invented some method 
which suits your convenience better. While many 
books have been written, and many lectures given 
exploiting mnemonic systems, they are, however, all 
founded upon the same general principle: namely, 
that of association of ideas in the mind. They all 



126 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

make use of the same basis for memory that any of 
us use every time we remember anything, from the 
commonest event which occurred last hour to the most 
abstruse bit of philosophy which we may have in our 
minds. They all tie the fact to be remembered to 
some other fact which is sure of recall, and then trust 
the old fact to bring the new along with it when it 
again comes into the mind. 

Artificial devices may be permissible in remember- 
ing the class of facts which have no logical associates 
to which we can relate them ; but even then I cannot 
help feeling that if we should use the same care and 
ingenuity in carefully recording the seemingly unre- 
lated facts that we do in working out the device and 
making the association in it, we should discover hid- 
den relations for most of the facts we wish to remem- 
ber, and we should be able to insure their recall as 
certainly and in a better way than through the device. 
Then, also, we should not be in danger of handing 
over to the device various facts for which we should 
discover relations, thus placing them in the logical 
body of our usable knowledge where they belong. 

EXERCISES 

Have some one -pronounce to you the following syllables, 
varying the order: ski, bij, col, laj, nol, kej, lun, duj, kel, 
mij. Now try to repeat them in the order in which they 
were given. Try a similar test by having them written in 
different order on a slip of paper at which you are to look 
for five seconds and then write the syllables in order. 

Do you find yourself trying to associate the syllables with 
some cue which will assist in recall? 

Try the same experiment with ten words which are not so 
related to each other as to form a sentence. 



MEMORY 127 

Now try the experiment, using this time ten words which 
together make a sentence. Why do you have no trouble to 
recall them in order? 

When you recall a stanza of poetry, do the various images 
suggested by the words come to you, or only images of the 
words themselves? 

Try committing some piece of poetry by reaUzing clearly 
all its images and associating then, in order as you commit. 
Do you find the recall easier than by committing the words 
alone? 

Are you seeking to improve your memory by associating 
your facts better through better thinking? by recording 
these facts under a high state of attention? 

Do you ever "cram" for examination? for recitations? 

Do you read a large amount of light literature which you 
do not care to remember? Does it pay? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XVIII. 
James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XVI. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapter IX. 
Dewey, "Psychology," Chapter VI. 
Thorndike, " Elements of Psychology," Chapter III. 
Schaeffer, "Thinking and Learning to Think," Chapter 
XL 



CHAPTER IX 



IMAGINATION 



If you are asked whether you have a good imagina- 
tion, you are likely at once to consider whether you are 
capable of taking wild flights into impossible realms 
of thought and evolving unrealities out of airy noth- 
ings. Or else you compare yourself with Bulwer, 
Stevenson, Poe, or De Quincey in their improbable 
tales and measure your imagination by their standard. 
Or you may recall the wonderful tales of ' ' The Ara- 
bian Nights '' or Don Quixote and decide upon the 
rank of your imagination by your ability to construct 
such stories. 

Now, while the foregoing indicate a high degree of 
imagination of a particular type, I want to protest 
against this type's standing as the sole, or even the 
most important, criterion of a good imagination. A 
good imagination, like a good memory, is the one 
which serves its owner best. If De Quincey and Poe 
and Stevenson and Bulwer found the type which led 
them into such dizzy flights the best for their par- 
ticular purpose, well and good ; but that is not saying 
that their type is the best for you, or that you may 
not rank els high in some other field of imaginative 
power as they in theirs. While you may lack in their 
particular type of imagination, they may have been 
short in the type which will one day make you famous. 
The artisan, the architect, the merchant, the artist, the 

128 



IMAGINATION 129 

fanner, the teacher, the professional man — all need 
imagination in their vocations not less than the writers 
need it in theirs, but each needs a specialized kind 
adapted to the particular work which he has to do. 

Imagination is not a process of thought which must The func- 
deal chiefly with unrealities and impossibilities, and imagina- 
which has for its chief end our amusement when we *^°"- 
have nothing better to do than to follow its wander- 
ings. It is, rather, a commonplace, necessary process 
which illumines the way for our everyday thinking 
and acting — a process without which we think and act 
by haphazard chance or blind imitation. It is the 
process by which the images from our past experiences 
are marshaled, and made to serve our present. Im- 
agination looks into the future and constructs our 
patterns and lays our plans. It sets up our ideals and 
pictures us in the acts of achieving them. It enables 
us to live our joys and our sorrows, our victories and 
our defeats before we reach them. It looks into the 
past and allows us to live with the kings and seers of 
old, or it goes back to the beginning and we see things 
in the process of the making. It comes into our pres- 
ent and plays a part in every act from the simplest 
to the most complex. It is to the mental stream what 
the light is to the traveler who carries it as he passes 
through the darkness, while it casts its beams in all 
directions around him, lighting up what otherwise 
would be intolerable gloom. 

To illustrate what I mean, let us see some of the most imagina- 
common uses of the imagination. Suppose I describe terpreting 
to you the siege which gave Port Arthur to Japan, ^f othera. 
Unless you can take the images which my words sug- 
gest and build them into struggling, shouting, bleeding 
soldiers; into forts and entanglements and breast- 



130 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

works; into roaring cannon and whistling bullet and 
screaming shell — unless you can take all these sepa- 
rate images and out of them get one great unified 
complex, then my description will be to you only so 
many words largely without content, and you will lack 
the power to comprehend the historical event in any 
complete way. Unless you can read the poem, and out 
of the images suggested by the words reconstruct the 
picture which was in the mind of the author as he 
wrote " The Village Blacksmith " or '' Snowbound," 
the significance will have dropped out, and the throb- 
bing scenes of life and action become only so many 
dead words, like the shell of the chrysalis after the 
butterfly has left its shroud. Without the power of 
imagination, the history of Washington's winter at 
Valley Forge becomes a mere formal recital, and you 
can never get a view of the snow-covered tents, the 
wind-swept landscape, the tracks in the snow marked 
by the telltale drops of blood, or the form of the 
heartbroken commander as he kneels in the silent wood 
to pray for his army. Without the power to construct 
this picture as you read, you may commit the words, 
and be able to recite them and to pass examination 
upon them, but the living reality of it will forever 
escape you. 
Imagina- Nor is imagination less necessary in other lines of 

science. study. Without this power of building living, moving 
pictures out of images, there is small use to study 
science beyond what is immediately present to our 
senses ; for some of the most fundamental laws of sci- 
ence rest upon conceptions which can be grasped only 
as we have the power of imagination. The student 
who cannot get a picture of the molecules of matter, 
infinitely close to each other and yet never touching, 



IMAGINATION 131 

all in vibratory motion, yet each within its own orbit, 
each a complete unit in itself, yet capable of still fur- 
ther division into smaller particles — the student who The world 
cannot see all this in a clear visual image can never micro- 
at best have more than a most hazy notion of the ^^^p^- 
molecular theory of matter. And this means, finally, 
that the explanations of light and heat and sound, and 
much besides, will be to him largely a jumble of words 
which linger in his memory, perchance, but which 
never vitally become a possession of his mind. 

So with the world of the telescope. You may have The world 
at your disposal all the magnificent lenses and the scope, 
accurate machinery owned by modern observatories; 
but if you have not within yourself the power to build 
what these reveal to you, and what the books tell you, 
into the solar system and still larger systems, you can 
never study astronomy except in a blind and piece- 
meal sort of way, and all the planets and satellites 
and suns will never for you form themselves into a 
system, no matter what the books may say about it. 

Your power of imagination determines your ability imagina- 
to interpret literature of all kinds; for the interpre- iiteJ-ature 
tation of literature is nothing, after all, but the recon- ^^^ ^^*- 
struction on our part of the pictures which were in 
the mind of the writer as he penned the w^ords, and 
the experiencing of the emotions which moved him as 
he wrote. Small use indeed to read the history of the 
centuries unless we can see in it living, acting people, 
and real events occurring in actual environments. 
Small use to read the world's great books unless 
their characters are to us real men and women — our 
brothers and sisters, interpreted to us by the master 
minds of the ages. Anything less than this, and we 
are no longer dealing with literature, but with words — 
10 



132 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

like musical sounds which deal with no theme, or like 
picture frames in which no picture has been set. Nor 
is the case different in listening to a speaker. His 
words are to you only so many sensations of sounds of 
such and such pitches and intensities and quality, un- 
less your mind keeps pace with his and continually 
builds the pictures which fill his thought as he 
speaks. Lacking imagination, the sculptures of Mi- 
chael Angelo and the pictures of Raphael are to you 
so many pieces of curiously shaped marble and in- 
geniously colored canvas. What the sculptor and the 
painter have placed before you must suggest to you 
images and thoughts from your own experience, to 
fill out and make alive the marble and the canvas, else 
to you they are dead. 
Imagina- So far I havc spoken of imagination only with rela- 

thinking. tion to its use in interpreting the thought of others 
through the images suggested to us by their language 
or their handiwork. Let us also see the part it plays 
in our own thinking. Suppose that, instead of reading 
a poem, we are writing one; instead of listening to a 
description of a battle, we are describing it ; instead of 
looking at the picture, we are painting it. Then our 
object is to make others who may read our language, 
or listen to our words, or view our handiwork, con- 
struct the mental images of the situation which fur- 
nished the material for our thought. Our words and 
other modes of expression are but the description of 
the flow of images in our minds, and our problem is 
to make a similar stream flow through the mind of 
the listener; but strange indeea would it be to make 
others see a situation which we ourselves cannot see; 
strange if we could draw a picture without being able 
to follow its outlines as we draw. Or, suppose we are 



nation. 



IMAGINATION 133 

teaching science, and our object is to explain the com- 
position of matter to some one, and make him under- 
stand how light, heat, etc., depend on the molecular 
theory; strange if the listener should get a picture 
if we ourselves are unable to get it. Or, once more, 
suppose we are to describe some incident, and our 
aim is to make its every detail stand out so clearly 
that no one can miss a single one. Is it not evident 
that we can never make any of these images more 
clear to those who listen to us or read our words than 
they are to ourselves? 

But we may consider a still more practical phase Someprac- 
of imagination, or at least one which has more to do ofimagi- 
with the humdrum daily life of most of us. Suppose 
you go to your milliner and tell her how you want 
your spring hat shaped and trimmed. And suppose 
you have never been able to see this hat in toto in 
your mind, so as to get an idea of how it will look 
when completed, but have only a general notion, be- 
cause you like red velvet, white plumes, and a turned- 
up rim, that this combination will look well together. 
Suppose you have never been able to see how you 
would look in this particular hat with your hair done 
in this or that way. If you are in this helpless state 
shall you not have to depend finally on the taste of 
the milliner, or accept the ** model,'* and so fail to 
reveal any taste or individuality on your own part? 
How many times have you been disappointed in some 
article of dress, because when you planned it you were 
unable to see it all at once so as to get the full effect ; 
or else you could not see yourself in it, and so be 
able to judge whether it suited you! How many 
homes have in them draperies and rugs and wall paper 
and furniture which are in constant quarrel because 



134 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

some one could not see before they were assembled 
that they were never intended to keep company! 
How many people who plan their own houses, would 
build them just the same again after seeing them 
completed! The man who can see a building com- 
plete before a brick has been laid or a timber put in 
place, who can see it not only in its details one by 
one as he runs them over in his mind, but can see the 
building in its entirety, is the only one who is safe to 
plan the structure. And this is the man who is draw- 
ing a large salary as an architect, for imaginations of 
this kind are in demand. Only the one who can see 
in his " mind's eye," before it is begun, the thing 
he would create, is capable to plan its construction. 
And who will say that ability to work with images of 
these kinds is not of just as high a type as that which 
results in the construction of plots upon which stories 
are built! 
Imagina- Another great field for the imagination is with ref- 

conduct. erence to conduct and our relations with others. Over 
and over again the thoughtless person has to say, '' I 
am sorry; I did not think." The " did not think " 
simply means that he failed to realize through his 
imagination what would be the consequences of his 
rash or unkind words. He would not be unkind, 
but he did not imagine how the other would feel ; he 
did not put himself in the other's place. Likewise 
with reference to the effects of our conduct on our- 
selves. What youth, taking his first drink of liquor, 
would continue if he could see a clear picture of him- 
self in the gutter with bloated face and bloodshot 
eyes a decade hence? Or what boy, slyly smoking 
one of his early cigarettes, would proceed if he could 
see his haggard face and nerveless hand a few years 



IMAGINATION 135 

farther along? What spendthrift would throw away 
his money on vanities could he vividly see himself in 
penury and want in old age? What prodigal any- 
where who, if he could take a good look at himself 
sin-stained and broken as he returns to his " father's 
house " after the years of debauchery in the *' far 
country," would not hesitate long before he entered 
upon his downward career? 

Nor is the part of the imagination less marked in Thebuiid- 
the formation of our life's ideals and plans. Every- Sf/pians^^ 
one who is not living blindly and aimlessly must have 
some ideal, some pattern, by which to square his life 
and guide his actions. At some time in our life I 
am sure that each of us has selected the person who 
filled most nearly our notion of what we should like 
to become, and measured ourselves by this pattern. 
But there comes a time when we must idealize even 
the most perfect individual ; when we invest the char- 
acter with attributes which we have selected from 
some other person, and thus worship at a shrine which 
is partly real and partly ideal. As time goes on, 
we drop out more and more of the strictly individual 
element, adding correspondingly more of the ideal, 
until our pattern is largely a construction of our own 
imagination, having in it the best we have been able 
to glean from the many characters we have known. 
How large a part these ever-changing ideals play in 
our lives we shall never know, but certainly the part 
is not an insignificant one. And happy the youth 
who is able to look into the future and see himself 
approximating some worthy ideal. He has caught a 
vision which will never allow him to lag or falter in 
the pursuit of the flying goal which points the direc- 
tion of his efforts. 



136 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



As in the case of memory, again, the material or 
stuff out of which imagination has to build its struc- 
ture consists of images. Nothing can ever enter the 
imagination any more than it can the memory, the ele- 
ments of which have not first come into our experience, 
and then been conserved for future use in the form 
of images. The Indians never dreamed of a heaven 
whose streets are paved with gold, and in whose cen- 
ter stands a great white throne. Their experience had 
given them no knowledge of these things ; and so, per- 
force, they must build their heaven out of the images 
which they had at command, namely, those connected 
with the chase and the forest. So their heaven was 
the ' ' happy hunting ground, ' ' inhabited by game and 
enemies over whom the blessed forever triumphed. 
Likewise the valiant soldiers whose deadly arrows and 
keen-edged swords and battle-axes won on the bloody 
field of Hastings, did not picture a far-off day when 
the opposing lines should kill each other with mighty 
engines hurling death from behind parapets a dozen 
miles away. Firearms and the explosive powder were 
yet unknown, hence there were no images out of which 
to build such a picture. 

I do not mean that your imagination cannot con- 
struct an object which has never before been in your 
experience as a whole, for the work of the imagination 
is to do precisely this thing. It takes the various im- 
ages at its disposal and builds them into wJioles which 
may never have existed before, and which may exist 
now only as a creation of the mind. And yet we have 
put into this new product not a single element which 
was not familiar to us in the form of an image of one 
kind or another. It is the form which is new; the 
material is old. This is exemplified every time an in- 



IMAGINATION 137 

ventor takes the two fundamental parts of a machine, 
the lever and the inclined plane, and puts them to- 
gether in relations new to each other and so evolves a 
machine whose complexity fairly bewilders us. And 
with other lines of thinking, as in mechanics, inven- 
tive power consists in being able to see the old in new 
relations, and so constantly build new constructions 
out of old material. It is this power which gives us 
the daring and original thinker, the Newton whose 
falling apple suggested to him the planets falling to- 
ward the sun in their orbits ; the Darwin who out of 
the thigh bone of an animal was able to construct in 
his imagination the whole animal and the environ- 
ment in which it must have lived, and so add another 
page to the earth 's history. 

From the simple facts which we have just been The two 
considering, the conclusion is plain that our power imag[na^ 
of imagination depends on two factors; namely, *^°^- 
(1) the materials available in the form of usable 
images capable of recall^ and (2) our constructive 
ability, or the power to group these images into new 
wholes, the process being guided by some purpose or 
end. Without this last provision, the products of our 
imagination are daydreams with their '^ castles in 
Spain," which may be pleasing and proper enough 
on occasions, but which as an habitual mode of 
thought are extremely dangerous. 

That the mind is limited in its imagination by its Imagina- 

j_ -, p • -I o • 1 -n J- A- tion limited 

stock 01 images may be seen irom a simple illustration : by stock 
Suppose that you own a building made of brick, but o^ images, 
that you find the old one no longer adequate for your 
needs, and so purpose to build a new one; and sup- 
pose, further, that you have no material for your new 
building except that contained in the old structure. 



138 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



It is evident that you will be limited in constructing 
your new building by the material which was in the 
old. You may be able to build the new structure 
in any one of a multitude of different forms or styles 
of architecture, so far as the material at hand will lend 
itself to that style of building, and providing, further, 
that you are able to make the plans. But you will 
always be limited finally by the character and amount 
of material obtainable from the old structure. So 
with the mind. The old building is your past expe- 
rience, and the separate bricks are the images out of 
which you must build your new structure through 
the imagination. Here, as before, nothing can enter 
which was not already on hand. Nothing goes into 
the new structure so far as its constructive material 
is concerned except images, and there is nowhere to 
get images but from the results of our past experience. 
But not only is our imaginative output limited by 
the amount of material in the way of images which 
we have at our command, but also and perhaps not 
less by our constructive ability. Many persons might 
own the old pile of bricks fully adequate for the new 
structure, and then fail to get the new because they 
were unable to construct it. So, many who have had a 
rich and -varied experience in many lines are yet un- 
able to muster their images of these experiences in such 
a way that new products are obtainable from them. 
These have the heavy, draft-horse kind of intellect 
which goes plodding on, very possibly doing good 
service in its own circumscribed range, but destined 
after all to service in the narrow field with its low, 
drooping horizon. They are never able to take a dash 
at a two-minute clip among equally swift competitors, 
or even swing at a good round pace along the pleasant 



IMAGINATION 139 

highways of an experience lying beyond the confines 
of the narrow here and now. These are the minds 
which cannot discover relations; which cannot think. 
Minds of this type can never be architects of their 
own fate, or even builders, but must content them- 
selves to be hod carriers. 

Nor are we to forget that we cannot intelligently The need 
erect our building until we know the purpose for posef^^ 
which it is to be used. No matter how much build- 
ing material we may have on hand, nor how skillful 
an architect we may be, unless our plans are guided 
by some definite aim, we shall be likely to end with a 
structure that is fanciful and useless. Likewise with 
our thought structure. Unless our imagination is 
guided by some aim or purpose, we are in danger of 
drifting into mere daydreams which not only are 
useless in furnishing ideals for the guidance of our 
lives, but often become positively harmful when 
grown into a habit. The habit of daydreaming is 
hard to break, and, continuing, holds our thought in 
thrall and makes it unwilling to deal with the plain, 
homely things of everyday life. Who has not had 
the experience of an hour or a day spent in a fairy- 
land of dreams, and awakened at the end to find 
himself rather dissatisfied with the prosaic round of 
duties which confronted him ! I do not mean to say 
that we should never dream; but I know of no more 
pernicious mental habit than that of daydreaming 
carried to excess, for it ends in our following every 
will-o'-the-wisp of fancy, and places us at the mercy 
of every chance suggestion. 

Theoretically, then, it is not hard to see what we Thecuiti- 
must do to cultivate our imagination. In the first imagina- 
place, we must take care to secure a large and usable *^°^- 



140 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

stock of images from all fields of perception. It is 
not enough to have visual images alone or chiefly, for 
many a time shall we need to build structures involv- 
ing all the other senses and the motor activities as well. 
This means that we must have a first-hand contact 
with just as large an environment as possible — large in 
the world of Nature with all her varied forms suited to 
appeal to every avenue of sense ; large in our contact 
with people in all phases of experience, laughing with 
those who laugh and weeping with those who weep ; 
large in contact with books, the interpreters of the 
men and events of the past. We must not only let all 
these kinds of environment drift in upon us as they 
may chance to do, but we must deliberately seek to 
increase our stock of experience ; for, after all, experi- 
ence lies at the bottom of imagination as of every 
other mental process. And not only must we thus put 
ourselves in the way of acquiring new experience, but 
we must by recall and reconstruction, as we saw in 
an earlier discussion, keep our imagery fresh and 
usable. For whatever serves to improve our images, 
at the same time is bettering the very foundation of 
imagination. 

In the second place, we must not fail to huild. For 
it is futile to gather a large supply of images if we 
let the material lie unused. How many people there 
are who put in all their time gathering material for 
their structure, and never take time to do the build- 
ing ! They look and listen and read, and are so fully 
occupied in absorbing the immediately present that 
they have no time to see the wider significance of the 
things with which they deal. They are like the stu- 
dents who are too busy studying to have time to 
think. They are so taken up with receiving that they 



IMAGINATION 



141 



never perform the higher act of combining. They 
are the plodding fact gatherers, many of them doing 
good service, collecting material which the seer and 
the philosopher, with their constructive power, build 
together into the greater wholes which make our sys- 
tems of thought. They are the ones who fondly think 
that, by reading bookfuls of wild tales and impossible 
plots, they are training their imagination. For them, 
sober history, no matter how heroic or tragic in its 
quiet movements, is too tame. They have not the 
patience to read solid and thoughtful literature, and 
works of science and philosophy are a bore. These 
are the persons who put in all their time in looking 
at and admiring other people's houses, and never get 
time to do any building for themselves. 

The best training for the imagination which I know 
anything about is that to be obtained by taking our own 
material and from it building our own structure. It 
is true that it will help to look through other people 's 
houses enough to discover their style of building : we 
should read. But just as it is not necessary for us 
to put in all the time we devote to looking at houses 
in inspecting doll houses and Chinese pagodas, so it is 
not best for us to get all our notions of imaginative 
structures from the marvelous and unreal: we get 
good training for the imagination from reading * ' Hia- 
watha, '^ but so can we from reading the history of 
the primitive Indian tribes. The pictures in ^' Snow- 
bound " are full of suggestion for the imagination; 
but so is the history of the Puritans in New England. 
But even with the best of models before us, it is not 
enough to follow others ' building. We must construct 
stories for ourselves, must work out plots for our own 
stories ; we must have time to meditate and plan and 



We should 
carry our 
ideals into 
action. 



142 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

build, not idly in the daydream, but purposefully, and 
then make our images real by carrying them out in 
activity, if they are of such a character that this is 
possible; we must build our ideals and work to them 
in the common course of our everyday life; we must 
think for ourselves instead of forever following the 
thinking of others ; we must initiate as well as imitate. 

EXERCISES 

1. Do you ever skip the descriptive parts of a book and 
read the narrative? 

2. As you read the description of a bit of natural scenery, 
does it rise before you? As you study the description of a 
battle, can you see the movements of the troops? 

3. Have you ever planned a house as you think you would 
like it? Can you see it from all sides? Can you see all the 
rooms in their various finishing and furnishings? 

4. What plans and ideals have you formed, and what ones 
are you at present following? 

5. Can you describe the process by which your plans or 
ideals change? 

6. Do you ever try to put yourself in the other person 's place ? 

7. Take some fanciful unreality which your imagination has 
constructed and see whether you can select from it familiar 
elements from actual experiences. 

8. What use do you make of imagination in the common 
round of duties in your daily life? 

9. What are you doing to improve your imagination? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Royce, "Outlines of Psychology," Chapter VI. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapter VIII. 
James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XIX. 
James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XVIII. 
Dewey, "Psychology," Chapter VII. 



CHAPTER X 



THINKING 



Imagine a world in which nothing is related to any- 
thing else ; in which every object perceived, remem- 
bered, or imagined, stands absolutely by itself, inde- 
pendent and self-sufficient! What a chaos it would 
be ! Trees would grow irrespective of soil, animals 
would live without reference to food and water, no 
man would have need of any other man. All would 
be independent of a creator, and no cause would be 
followed by an effect, nor any effect require a cause. 
Of course such a world is utterly impossible and un- 
thinkable. Yet this is just such a world as our world 
of knowledge would be without the power of thought. 
We might perceive, remember, and imagine all the 
various objects we please, but without the power to 
think them together, they would all be totally unre- 
lated, and hence have no meaning. 

To have a rational meaning for us, things must 
always be defined in terms of other things, or in terms 
of their uses. Fuel is that which feeds fire. Food is 
what is eaten for nourishment. A locomotive is a ma- 
chine for drawing a train. Books are to read, pianos 
to play, halls to throw, schools to instruct, friends to 
enjoy, and so on through the whole list of objects 
which we know or can define. Everything depends 
for its meaning on its relation to other things ; and the 
more of these relations we can discover, the more fully 

143 



Interde- 
pendence 
of objects, 
both phys- 
ical and 
mental. 



Meaning 
depends on 
relations. 



144 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The func- 
tion of 
thinking 
is to dis- 
cover re- 
lations. 



do we see the meaning. Thus balls may have other 
uses than to throw, schools other functions than to 
instruct, and friends mean much more to us than mere 
enjoyment. And just in the degree in which we have 
realized these different relations, have we defined the 
object, or, in other words, have we seen its meaning. 

Now it is by thinking that these relations are dis- 
covered. This is the function of thinking. Thinking 
takes the various separate items of our experience and 
discovers to us the relations existing among them, and 
builds them together into a unified, related, and usable 
body of knowledge, threading each little bit on the 
string of relationship which runs through the whole. 
It was, no doubt, this thought which Tennyson had in 
mind when he wrote : 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 



Near and 
remote re- 
lations. 



Starting in with even so simple a thing as a little 
flower, if he could discover all the relations which 
every part bears to every other part and to all other 
things besides, he would finally reach the meaning 
of God and man. For each separate thing, be it large 
or small, forms a link in an unbroken chain of rela- 
tionships which binds the universe into an ordered 
whole. 

The relations discovered through our thinking may 
be very close and simple ones, as when a child sees 
the relation between his bottle and his dinner ; or they 
may be very remote ones, as when Newton saw the 



THINKING 145 

relation between the falling of an apple and the mo- 
tion of the planets in their orbits. But whether sim- 
ple or remote, the seeing of the relationships is in 
both cases alike thinking; for thinking is nothing, in 
its last analysis, but the discovering of the relation- 
ships which exist between the various objects in our 
mental stream. Thinking passes through all grades 
of complexity, from the first faint dawnings in the 
mind of the babe when it sees the relation between 
the mother and its feeding, on to the mighty grasp of 
the sage who is able to " think God's thoughts after 
Him." But it all comes to the same end finally — 
the bringing to light of new meanings through the 
discovery of new relations. And whatever does this 
is thinking. 

What constitutes the difference in the thinking of Thethink- 
the child and that of the sage? Let us see whether chfidandof 
we can discover this difference. In the first place the ^^^^ adult, 
relations seen by the child are immediate relations : 
they exist between simple percepts or images ; the re- 
mote and the general are beyond his reach. He has 
not had sufficient experience to enable him to discover 
remote relations. He cannot think things which are 
absent from him, or which he has never known. The 
child could by no possibility have seen in the falling 
apple what Newton saw; for the child knew nothing 
of the planets in their orbits, and hence could not 
see relations in which these formed one of the terms. 
The sage, on the other hand, is not limited to his im- 
mediate percepts or their images. He can see remote 
relations. He can go beyond individuals, and think 
in classes. The falling apple is not a mere falling 
apple to him, but one of a class of falling bodies. Be- 
sides a rich experience full of valuable facts, the 



146 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Complex 
and dis- 
tant re- 
lations 
must be 
discovered. 



trained thinker has acquired also the habit of looking 
out for relations; he has learned that this is the 
method par excellence of increasing his store of knowl- 
edge and of rendering effective the knowledge he has. 
He has learned how to think. The chief business of 
the child is the collection of the materials of thought, 
seeing only the more necessary and obvious relations 
as he proceeds; his chief business when older grown 
is to seek out the network of relations which unites 
this mass of material, and through this process to 
systematize and give new meanings to the whole. 

Relations seen between sensations would mean some- 
thing, but not much; relations seen between objects 
immediately present to the senses would mean much 
more; but our thinking must go far beyond the 
present, and likewise far beyond individual objects. 
It must be able to annihilate both time and space, and 
to deal with millions of individuals together in one 
class. Only in this way can our thinking go beyond 
that of the lower animals; for a wise rat, even, may 
come to see the relation between a trap and danger, 
or a horse the relation between pulling with his teeth 
at the piece of string on the gate latch, and securing 
his liberty. But it takes the farther-reaching mind 
of man to invent the trap and the latch. Perception 
alone does not go far enough. It is limited to imme- 
diately present individuals. The perceptual image is 
likewise subject to similar limitations. While it en- 
ables us to dispense with the immediate presence of 
the object, yet it deals with separate individuals ; and 
the world is too full of individual objects for us to 
deal with them separately. 

Fortunately for our thinking, the great external 
world, with its millions upon millions of individual 



THINKING 147 

objects, is so ordered that these objects can be grouped Relations 
into comparatively few great classes; and for many the^ex^fmal 
purposes we can deal with the class as a whole in- ^^^l^^f 
stead of with the separate individuals of the class. 
Thus there are an infinite number of individual ob- 
jects in the world which are composed of matter. Yet 
all these myriads of individuals may be classed under 
the two great heads of inanimate and animate. Tak- 
ing one of these again: all animate forms may be 
classed as either plants or animals. And these classes 
may again be subdivided indefinitely. Animals in- 
clude mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, mollusks, and 
many other classes besides, each class of which may 
be still further separated into its orders, families, 
genera, species, and individuals. This arrangement 
economizes our thinking by allowing us to think in 
large terms. 

But this somewhat complicated form of classifica- How ciassi- 
tion did not come to man ready-made. Some one had accom? ^^ 
to see the relationship existing among the myriads of Thecwi- 
animals of a certain class, and group these together cept. 
under the general term mammals. Likewise with birds, 
reptiles, insects, and all the rest. In order to accom- 
plish this, many individuals of each class had to be 
observed, the qualities common to all members of the 
class discriminated from those not common, and the 
common qualities retained as the measure by which 
to test the admission of other individuals into this 
class. The process of classification is made possible 
by what the psychologist calls the concept. The con- 
cept enables us to think birds as well as bluebirds, 
robins, and wrens ; it enables us to think men as well 
as Tom, Dick, and Harry. In other words, the concept 

lies at the bottom of all thinking which rises above the 
11 



148 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

seeing of the simplest relations between immediately 
present objects. 
Nature and We Can perhaps best understand the nature of the 
aToncept. concept if we watch its growth in the thinking of a 
child. Let us see how the child forms the concept 
dog, under which he is able finally to class the several 
hundred or the several thousand different dogs with 
which his thinking requires him to deal. The child's 
first acquaintance with a dog is, let us suppose, with 
a pet poodle, white in color, and named Gyp. At 
this stage in the child's experience, dog and Gyp are 
entirely synonymous, including Gyp's color, size, and 
all other qualities which the child has discovered. 
But now let him see another pet poodle which is like 
Gyp except that it is black in color. Here comes the 
first cleavage between Gyp and dog as synonyms : dog 
no longer means white, but may mean black. Next 
let the child see a brown spaniel. Not only will white 
and black now no longer answer to dog, but the roly- 
poly poodle form also has been lost; for the spaniel 
is more slender. Let the child go on from this until 
he has seen many different dogs of all varieties: 
poodles, bulldogs, setters, shepherds, cockers, and a 
. host of others. What has happened to his dog, which 
at the beginning meant the one particular little in- 
dividual with which he played? Dog is no longer 
white or black or brown or gray : color is not an essen- 
tial quality, so it has dropped out; size is no longer 
essential except within very broad limits; shagginess 
or smoothness of coat is a very inconstant quality, 
so this is dropped ; form varies so much from the fat 
pug to the slender hound that it is discarded, except 
within broad limits ; good nature, playfulness, friend- 
liness, and a dozen other qualities are likewise found 



THINKING 149 

not to belong in common to all dogs, and so have had 
to go ; and all that is left to his dog is four-footedness, 
a certain general form, and a few other dog qualities 
of habit of life and disposition. As the term dog has 
been gaining in extent, that is, as more individuals 
have been observed and classed under it, it has corre- 
spondingly been losing in content, or it has been losing 
in the specified qualities which belong to it. Yet it 
must not be thought that the process is altogether one 
of elimination ; for new qualities which are present in 
all the individuals of a class, but at first overlooked, are 
continually being discovered as experience grows, and 
built into the developing concept. What the concept 
consists of finally is the common qualities or attributes 
of the class, which have been abstracted from the dif- 
ferent individuals of the class and built together into 
a new image whose function is to enable us to classify 
our experience, and thus to deal with classes or uni- 
versals in our thinking. Language comes in and crys- 
tallizes our concepts in words, so that we are able to 
understand each others' thoughts in oral or written 
speech. Words must change in meaning as concepts 
change, hence the language of a thinking people is 
constantly growing. 

It is not hard to see that the validity of our think- Good 
ing is conditioned in large part by the correctness of carmoTbe 
our concepts. It is evident that, if the child has poo^^^^on- 
reached but the '' poodle " stage in his concept dog cepts. 
when he hears the story of a rescue by a St. Bernard 
of travelers lost on the mountains, he will have trouble 
to understand how a dog with '' poodle " qualities 
could do the things which the story relates. If our 
concept of pleasure is limited to the feeling accom- 
panying the satisfying of sensual appetites, we shall 



150 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

have trouble to comprehend pleasure as related to in- 
tellectual achievement, spiritual communion, or aes- 
thetic appreciation. These illustrations also imply 
that if we are to have good concepts, we must have 
a broad experience. The child must observe many 
different kinds of dogs, and we must experience many 
different kinds of pleasure, if the respective concepts 
are to be safe ones in our thinking. And not only 
this, but our observation must be discriminative. We 
must select out of the different individuals their im- 
portant or characteristic elements, else our concept 
will lack some of the essential qualities it should 
possess and will include others which are unnecessary 
or accidental. 
Judgment. But in the building up of any percepts and con- 
cepts, as well as in making use of them after they are 
formed, another process of thinking enters; namely, 
the process of judging. Judging enters more or less 
into all our thinking, from the simplest to the most 
complex. The babe lies staring at his bottle, and 
finally it dawns on his sluggish mind that this is the 
object from which he gets his dinner. He has per- 
formed a judgment. That is, he has alternately di- 
rected his attention to the object before him and to 
his image of former nursing, discovered the relation 
existing between the two, and affirmed to himself, 
** This is what gives me my dinner." '' Bottle and 
what-gives-me-my-dinner " are essentially identical 
to the child. Judgment is, then, the affirmation or 
denial of the esse7itial identity of meaning of two 
objects of thought. Even if the proposition in which 
we state our judgment has in it a negative, the defini- 
tion will still hold, for the mental process is the same 
in either case. It is as much a judgment if we say, 



THINKING 151 

** The day is not cold,'* as if we say, ** The day is 
cold." 

How judgment enters into the forming of our per- The process 
cepts may be seen from the illustration just given, enters^'nto 
The act by which the child perceived his bottle had ^epts^^' 
in it a large element of judging. In order that he 
might perceive the bottle at all, that is, recognize it as 
a bottle, there had to come to his mind images of 
former experiences with the thing which looked as 
this thing looks, and he had to affirm, ' ' Sure enough, 
this is my old bottle." He had to compare two ob- 
jects of thought — the one from past experience in the 
form of images, and the other from the present object, 
in the form of sensations from the bottle — and then 
affirm their essential identity. Of course it is not 
meant that what I have described consciously takes 
place in the mind of the child; but some such process 
lies at the bottom of every perception, whether of the 
child or of anyone else. 

Likewise it may be seen that the forming of con- And also 
cepts depends on judgment. Every time that we concepts, 
meet a new individual which has to be assigned its 
place in our classification, judgment is required. 
Suppose the child, with his immature concept dog, 
sees for the first time a greyhound. He must com- 
pare this new specimen with his concept dog^ and 
decide that this is or is not a dog. If he discovers 
the identity of meaning in the essentials of the two 
objects of thought, his judgment will be affirmative, 
and his concept will be modified in whatever extent 
greyhound will affect it. 

But judgment goes much further than to assist in 
building percepts and concepts. It takes our con- 
cepts after they are formed and discovers and affirms 



152 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Judgment 
leads from 
particular 
to general 
truths. 



What de- 
termines 
the validity 
of a judg- 
ment. 



relations between them, thus enabling us finally to 
relate classes as well as individuals. It carries our 
thinking over into the realm of the universal, where 
we are not hampered by particulars. Let us see how 
this is done. Suppose we have the concept man and 
the concept animal, and that we think of these two 
concepts in their relation to each other. The mind 
analyzes each into its elements, compares them, and 
finds the essential identity of meaning in a sufficient 
number to warrant the judgment, Man is an animal. 
This judgment has given a new bit of knowledge, in 
that it has discovered to us a new relation between 
two great classes, and hence given both, in so far, a 
new meaning and a wider definition. And as this 
new relation does not pertain to any particular man 
or any particular animal, but includes all individuals 
in each class, it has carried us over into universals, 
so that we have a gene^ml truth and will not have to 
test each individual man henceforth to see whether 
he fits into this relation. 

Now since every judgment is made up of an affir- 
mation of relation existing between two terms, it is 
evident that the validity of the judgment will depend 
on the thoroughness of our knowledge of the terms 
compared. If we know but few of the attributes of 
either term of the judgment, the judgment is clearly 
unsafe. Imperfect concepts lie at the basis of many 
of our wrong judgments. A young man complained 
because his friend had been expelled from college for 

alleged misbehavior. He said, " Mr. A was the 

best boy in the institution." It is very evident that 
some one had made a mistake in judgment. Surely 
no college w^ould want to expel the best boy in the insti- 
tution. Either my complainant or the authorities of 



THINKING 153 

the college had failed to understand one of the terms 

in the judgment. Either " Mr. A " or " the best 

boy in the institution " had been wrongly interpreted 
by some one. Likewise, one person will say, '' Jones 
is a good man," while another will say, " Jones is a 
rascal. ' ' Such a discrepancy in judgment must come 
from a lack of acquaintance with Jones or a lack of 
knowledge of what constitutes a good man or a rascal. 

No doubt most of us are prone to make judgments The remedy 
with too little knowledge of the terms we are com- judgments, 
paring, and it is usually those who have the least rea- 
son for confidence in their judgments who are the 
most certain that they cannot be mistaken. The 
remedy for faulty judgments is, of course, in making 
ourselves more certain of the terms involved, and 
this in turn sends us back for a review of our con- 
cepts and percepts upon which the terms depend. It 
is evident that no two persons can have just the same 
concepts, for all have not had the same experience 
out of which their concepts came. The concepts may 
be named the same, and may be nearly enough alike 
so that we can usually understand each other; but, 
after all, I have mine and you have yours, and if we 
could each see the other's in its true light, no doubt 
we should save many misunderstandings and quarrels. 

Since thinking rests so fundamentally on concepts, The neces- 
progress in our mental life must depend on a constant growrng 
growth in the number and character of our concepts, concepts. 
Not only must we keep on adding new concepts, but 
the old must not remain static. When our concepts 
stop growing, our minds have ceased to grow — we no 
longer learn. This arrest of development is often 
seen in persons who have settled into a life of narrow 
routine, where the demands are few and of a simple 



154 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



nature. Unless they rise above their routine, they 
early become *' old fogies." Their concepts petrify 
from lack of use and the constant reconstruction 
which growth necessitates. On the other hand, the 
person who has upon him the constant demand to 
meet new situations or do better in old ones will keep 
on enriching his old concepts and forming new ones, 
or else, unable to do this, he will fail in his position. 
And the person who keeps on steadily enriching his 
concepts has discovered the secret of perpetual youth 
so far as his mental life is concerned. For him there 
is no old age; his thought will be always fresh, his 
experience always accumulating, and his knowledge 
growing more valuable and usable. 

All the mental processes which we have so far de- 
scribed find their culmination and highest utility in 
reasoning. Not that reasoning comes last in the list of 
mental activities, and cannot take place until all the 
others have been completed, for reasoning is in some 
degree present almost from the dawn of consciousness. 
The difference between the reasoning of the child and 
that of the adult is largely one of degree, of reach. 
Reasoning goes farther than any of the other processes 
of cognition, for it takes the relations expressed in 
judgments and out of these relations evolves still 
other and more ultimate relations. It is hard to define 
reasoning so as to describe the precise process which 
occurs ; for it is so intermingled with perception, con- 
ception, and judgment, that one can hardly separate 
them even for purposes of analysis, much less to sepa- 
rate them functionally. We may, however, define 
reasoning provisionally as thinking with a purpose of 
arriving at some definite end. What does this mean ? 
Professor Angell has stated the matter so clearly that 



THINKING 155 

I will quote his illustration of the case: '* Suppose 
that we are about to make a long journey which 
necessitates the choice from among a number of pos- 
sible routes. This is a case of the genuinely prob- 
lematic kind. It requires reflection, a weighing of 
the pros and cons, and a giving of the final decision 
in favor of one or other of several alternatives. In 
such a case the procedure of most of us is after this 
order. We think of one route as being picturesque 
and wholly novel, but also as being expensive. We 
think of another as less interesting, but also as less 
expensive. A third is, we discover, the most expedi- 
ent, but also the most costly of the thVee. We find 
ourselves confronted, then, with the necessity of 
choosing with regard to the relative merits of cheap- 
ness, beauty, and speed. We proceed to consider 
these points in the light of all our interests, and the 
decision more or less makes itself. We find, for in- 
stance, that we must, under the circumstances, select 
the cheapest route. ' ' ^ 

Such a line of thinking is very common to every- Aniiius- 
one, and one that we carry out in one form or another the proc- 
a thousand times every day we live. When we come ^^^• 
to look closely at the steps involved in arriving at a 
conclusion, we detect a series of judgments. Often 
not very logically arranged, to be sure, but yet so 
related that the result is safely reached in the end. 
We compare our concept of, say, the first route and 
our concept of picturesqueness, decide they agree, and 
affirm the judgment, " This route is picturesque." 
Likewise we arrive at the judgment, * ' This route is 
also expensive, it is interesting, etc." Then we take 

1" Psychology, "p. 235. 



156 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

the other routes and form our judgments concern- 
ing them. These judgments are all related to each 
other in some way, some of them being more inti- 
mately related than others. Which ones remain as 
the significant ones, the ones which are used to solve 
the problem finally, depends on which concepts are 
the most vital for us with reference to the ultimate 
end in view. If time is the chief element, then the 
form of our reasoning would be something like this: 
" Two of the routes require more than three days; 
hence I must take the third route.'' If economy is 
the important end, the solution would be as follows: 
' ' Two routes cost more than $1,000 ; I cannot afford 
to pay more than $800 ; I therefore must patronize the 
third route. ' ' In both cases it is evident that the con- 
clusion is reached through a comparison of two judg- 
ments. This is the essential difference between judg- 
ment and reasoning. Whereas judgment discovers 
relations between concepts, reasoning discovers rela- 
tions between judgments, and from this evolves a new 
judgment which is the conclusio7i sought. The exam- 
ple given well illustrates the ordinary method by 
which we reason to conclusions. 

Logic takes the conclusion, with the judgments on 
which it is based, and forms the three into what is 
called a syllogism, of which the following is a classical 
type: 

All men are mortal ; 
Socrates is a man, 

Therefore 
Socrates is mortal. 

The first judgment is in the form of a proposition 
which is called the major premise, because it is general 



THINKING 157 

in its nature, including all men. The second is the 
minor premise, since it deals with a particular man. 
The third is the conclusion, in which a new relation 
is discovered between Socrates and mortality. 

This form of reasoning is deductive, that is, it pro- 
ceeds from the general to the particular. Much of our 
reasoning is an abbreviated form of the syllogism, and 
will readily expand into it. For instance, we say, 
'' It will rain to-night, for there is lightning in the 
west. ' ' Expanded into the syllogism form it would be, 
'' Lightning in the west is a sure sign of rain; there 
is lightning in the west this evening ; therefore, it will 
rain to-night. ' ' This is a valuable form of reasoning, 
but a moment's reflection will show that something 
must precede the syllogism in our reasoning. The 
major premise must he accounted for. How are we 
able to say that all men are mortal, and that lightning 
in the west is a sure sign of rain ? How was this gen- 
eral truth arrived at ? There is only one way, namely, 
through the observation of a large number of particu- 
lar instances, or through induction. 

Induction is the method of proceeding from the induction, 
particular to the general. Many men are observed, 
and it is found that all who have been observed 
have died under a certain age. It is true that not all 
men have been observed to die, since many are now 
living, and many more will no doubt come and live 
in the world whom ive cannot observe, since mortality 
will have overtaken us before their advent. To this 
it may be answered that the men now living have not 
yet lived up to the limit of their time, and, besides, 
they have within them the causes working whose in- 
evitable effect has alv^^ays been and always will be 
death; likewise with the men yet unborn, they will 



158 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



possess the same organism as we, whose very nature 
necessitates mortality. In the case of the premoni- 
tions of rain, the generalization is not so safe, for 
there have been exceptions. Lightning in the west at 
night is not always followed by rain, nor can we find 
inherent causes as in the other case which necessitates 
rain as an effect. 

Thus it is seen that our generalizations, or major 
premises, are of all degrees of validity. In the case 
of some, as the mortality of man, millions of cases 
have been observed and no exceptions found, but on 
the contrary, causes discovered whose operation ren- 
ders the result inevitable. In others, as, for instance, 
in the generalization once made, '' All cloven-footed 
animals chew their cud, ' ' not only had the examination 
of individual cases not been carried so far as in the 
former case when the generalization was made, but 
there were found no inherent causes residing in cloven- 
footed animals which make it necessary for them to 
chew their cud. That is, cloven feet and cud-chewing 
do not of necessity go together, and the case of the 
pig disproves the generalization. 

In practically no instance, however, is it possible 
for us to examine every case upon which a generali- 
zation is based; after examining a sufficient number 
of cases, and particularly if there are supporting 
causes, we are warranted in making the '' inductive 
leap " or in proceeding at once to state our generali- 
zation as a working hjrpothesis. Of course it is easy 
to see that if we have a wrong generalization, if our 
major premise is invalid, all that follows in our chain 
of reasoning will be worthless. This fact should ren- 
der us careful in making generalizations on too narrow 
a basis of induction. We may have observed that cer- 



THINKING 159 

tain red-haired people of our acquaintance are quick- 
tempered, but we are not justified from this in making 
the general statement that all red-haired people are 
quick-tempered. Not only have we not examined a 
sufficient number of cases to warrant such a conclu- 
sion, but we have found in the red hair not even a 
cause of quick temper, but only an occasional con- 
comitant. 

Induction and deduction must go hand in hand The inter- 
in building up our world of knowledge. Induction induction 
gives us the particular facts out of which our system ^uctfon 
of knowledge is built, furnishes us with the data out 
of which general truths are formed ; deduction allows 
us to start with the generalization furnished us by 
induction, and from this vantage ground to organize 
and systematize our knowledge, and through the dis- 
covery of its relations, to unify it and make it usable. 
Deduction starts with a general truth and asks the 
question, " What new relations are made necessary 
among particular facts by this truth? " Induction 
starts with particulars, and asks the question, " To 
what general truth do these separate facts lead? " 
Each method of reasoning needs the other. Deduc- 
tion must have induction to furnish the facts for its 
premises; induction must have deduction to organ- 
ize these separate facts into a unified body of knowl- 
edge. '* He only sees well who sees the whole in the 
parts, and the parts in the whole.'' 



EXERCISES 

Can you remember how some of your earlier concepts were 
built up, such as the concept, horse, city, river ? 

What concepts have you now which you are aware are 



160 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

very meager? What is your concept of mountain? How 
many have you seen? 

Have you any concepts which you are working very hard 
to enrich? 

Recall some judgment which you have made and which 
proved to be false, and see whether you can now discover 
what was wrong with it. Do you find the trouble to be 
an inadequate concept? 

What constitutes "good judgment"? "poor judgment"? 

Did you ever make a mistake in an example in, say, per- 
centage by saying, "This is the base," when it proved not to 
be? What was the cause of the error? 

Can you recall any instance in which you made too hasty 
a generalization when you had observed but few cases upon 
which to base your premises? What of your reasoning which 
followed? 

See whether you can show that validity of reasoning rests 
back ultimately on correct perceptions. 

What are you doing at present to increase your power of 
thinking? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Angell, " Psychology," Chapters X-XII. 

Royce, " OutHnes of Psychology," Chapters XI and XII. 

Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter VIII. 

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapters XIV, 
XVI, and XXII. 

Halleck, " Psychology and Psychic Culture," Chapters 
VIII and IX. 

Schaeffer, " Thinking and Learning to Think," Chapters 
XVI and XVII. 



CHAPTER XI 
INSTINCT 

Each individual, busied with his own affairs and The in- 
blinded by his own interests, is likely to take himself heredity, 
for granted and forget that he is a part of a great, 
unbroken procession of life, which began at the be- 
ginning and will go on till the end. Strange indeed 
would it be if all the generations who have lived, 
struggled, and died before us, and whose blood flows 
in our veins had left no impress upon us. We are 
a part of all that has gone before, and all that comes 
after us will be a part of us. Each generation re- 
ceives, through heredity, the products of the long ex- 
perience through which the race has passed. The 
generation receiving the gift to-day lives its own brief 
life, makes its own little contribution to the sum total 
and then passes on as millions have done before. 
Through heredity, the passions, the fears, and the 
tragedies of generations long since moldered to dust 
stir our blood and tone our nerves for the conflict of 
to-day. 

Every child born into the world has resting upon Instinct 
him an unseen hand reaching out from the past, push- of race ex- 
ing him out to meet his environment, and guiding penence. 
him in the start upon his journey. This impelling 
and guiding power from the past we call instinct. In 
the words of Mosso: " Instinct is the voice of past 
generations reverberating like a distant echo in the 

161 



162 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

cells of the nervous system. We feel the breath, the 
advice, the experience of all men, from those who 
lived on acorns and struggled like wild beasts, dying 
naked in the forest, down to the virtue and toil of 
our father, the fear and love of our mother." 

The child is born ignorant and helpless. He has 
no memory, no reason, no imagination. He has never 
performed a conscious act, and does not know how 
to begin. He must get started, but how ? He has no 
experience to direct him, and he is unable to under- 
stand or imitate others of his kind. It is at this point 
that instinct comes to his rescue. The race has not 
given the child a mind ready made — that must de- 
velop ; but it has given him a ready-made nervous sys- 
tem, ready to respond with the proper movements 
when it receives the touch of its environment through 
the senses. And this nervous system has been so 
trained during a limitless past that its responses are 
the ones which are necessary for the welfare of its 
owner. It can do a hundred things without having 
to wait to learn them. Burdette says of the new- 
born child, '' Nobody told him what to do. Nobody 
taught him. He knew. Placed suddenly on the 
guest list of this old caravansary, he knew his way at 
once to two places in it — ^his bedroom and the dining 
room." A thousand generations of babies had done 
the same thing in the same way, and each had made 
it a little easier for this particular baby to do his part 
without learning how. 
Definition Instmcts are the tendency to act in certain definite 
ways, without previous education and without a con- 
scious end in view. They are a tendency to act; for 
some movement, or motor adjustment, is the response 
to an instinct. They do not require previous educa- 



of instinct. 



INSTINCT 163 

tion, for none is possible with many instinctive acts: 
the duck does not have to be taught to swim or the 
baby to suck. They have no conscious end in view, 
for the act follows the pressure of the proper stimu- 
lus upon the preorganized nervous system as the dis- 
charge of a gun follows the pressure of the finger 
upon the trigger. Says James : ' ' The cat runs after 
the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids 
falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, 
etc., not because he has any notion either of life or 
death, or of self, or of preservation. He has prob- 
ably attained to no one of these conceptions in such 
a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each 
case separately, and simply because he cannot help 
it; being so framed that when that particular run- 
ning thing called a mouse appears in his field of 
vision he must pursue; that when that particular 
barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears 
he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close 
by; that he must withdraw his feet from water and 
his face from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a 
great extent a preorganized bundle of such reactions. 
They are as fatal as sneezing, and as exactly corre- 
lated to their special excitants as it to its own. ' ' ^ 
You ask. Why does the lark rise on the flash of a sun- 
beam from his meadow to the morning sky leaving a 
trail of melody to mark his flight? Why does the 
beaver build his dam, and the oriole hang her nest? 
Why are myriads of animal forms on the earth to- 
day doing what they were countless generations ago! 
Why does the lover seek the maid, and the mother 
cherish her young? Because the voice of the past 



»" Psychology," p. 391. 
12 



164 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

speaks to the present^ and the present has no choice 
hut to obey. 
Through Instincts are the habits of the race which it be- 

individuai queaths to the individual; the individual takes these 
halMts^o/^^ for his start, and then modifies them through educa- 
therace. tion, and thus adapts himself to his environment. 
Through his instincts, the individual is enabled to 
short-cut racial experience, and begin at once on life 
activities which the race has been ages in acquiring. 
Instinct preserves to us what the race has achieved 
in experience, and so starts us out where the race 
left off. 
Unmodified Many of the lower animal forms act on instinct 
Sfnd!^ ^^ blindly, unable to use past experience to guide their 
acts, incapable of education. Some of them carry 
out seemingly marvelous activities, yet their acts are 
as automatic as those of a machine and as devoid of 
foresight. A species of mud wasp carefully selects 
clay of just the right consistency, finds a somewhat 
sheltered nook under the eaves, and builds its nest, 
leaving one open door. Then it seeks a certain kind 
of spider, and, having stung it so as to benumb with- 
out killing, carries it into the new-made nest, lays 
its eggs on the body of the spider so that the young 
wasps may have food immediately upon hatching out, 
then goes out and plasters the door over carefully to 
exclude all intruders. Wonderful intelligence? Not 
intelligence at all. Its acts were dictated not by plans 
for the future, but by pressure from the past. Let 
the supply of clay fail, or the race of spiders become 
extinct, and the wasp is helpless and its species will 
perish. Likewise the race of bees and ants have done 
wonderful things, but individual bees and ants are 
very stupid and helpless when confronted by any 



INSTINCT 165 

novel conditions to which their race has not been ac- 
customed. 

Man starts in as blindly as the lower animals; but, Human 
thanks to his higher mental powers, this blindness soon modified by 
gives way to foresight, and he is able to formulate e^^^cation. 
purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their ac- 
complishment. Possessing a larger' number of in- 
stincts than the lower animals have, man finds possible 
a greater number of responses to a more complex en- 
vironment than do they. This advantage, coupled with 
his ability to reconstruct his experience in such a way 
that he secures constantly increasing control over his 
environment, easily makes man the superior of all the 
animals, and enables him to exploit them for his own 
further advancement. 

It is not well that we should be started on too many instincts 
different lines of activity at once, hence our instincts succession 
do not all appear at the same time. Only as fast as ^^l^ed. 
we need additional activities do they ripen. Our 
very earliest activities are concerned chiefly with 
feeding, hence we first have the instincts which 
prompt us to take our food and to cry for it when we 
are hungry. Also we find useful such abbreviated 
instincts, called reflexes, as sneezing, snuffling, gag- 
ging, vomiting, starting, etc.; hence we have the in- 
stincts enabling us to do these things. Soon comes 
the time for teething, and, to help the matter along, 
the instinct of biting enters, and the rubber ring is 
in demand. The time approaches when we are to 
feed ourselves, so the instinct arises to carry every- 
thing to the mouth. Now we have grown stronger 
and must assume an erect attitude, hence the instinct 
to sit up and then to stand. Locomotion comes next, 
and with it the instinct to creep and walk. Also a 



166 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

language must be learned, and we must take part in 
the busy life about us and do as other people do; so 
the instinct to imitate arises that we may learn things 
quickly and easily. We need a spur to keep us up 
to our best effort, so the instinct of emulation emerges. 
We must defend ourselves, so the instinct of pug- 
nacity is born. We need to be cautious, hence the 
instinct of fear. We need to be investigative, hence 
the instinct of curiosity. Much self-directed activ- 
ity is necessary for our development, hence the play 
instinct. It is best that we should come to know and 
serve others, so the instincts of sociability and sym- 
pathy arise. We need to select a mate and care for 
offspring, hence the instinct of love for the other sex, 
and the parental instinct. This is far from a com- 
plete list of our instincts, and I have not tried to fol- 
low the order of their development, but I have given 
enough to show the origin of many of our life's most 
important activities. 
Many in- Not Only do iustiucts ripen by degrees, entering our 

stincts are . , ,, t i i . .i 

transitory, experience one by one as they are needed, but they 
drop out when their work is done. Some, like the 
instinct of self-preservation, are needed our lifetime 
through, hence they remain to the end. Others, like 
the play instinct, serve their purpose and disappear 
in a few years, or a few months. The life of the in- 
stinct is always as transitory as is the necessity for the 
activity to which it gives rise. No instinct remains 
w^holly unaltered in man, for it is constantly being 
made over in the light of each new experience. The 
instinct of self-preservation is modified by knowledge 
and experience, so that the defense of the man against 
threatened danger would be very different from that 
of the child; yet the instinct to protect oneself in 



INSTINCT 167 

some way remains. On the other hand, the instinct 
to romp and play is less permanent. It may last into 
adult life, but few middle-aged or old people care to 
race about as do children. Their activities are occu- 
pied in other lines, and they require less physical 
exertion. Contrast with these two examples such in- 
stincts as sucking, creeping, and crying, which are 
much more fleeting than the play instinct, even. With 
dentition comes another mode of eating, and sucking 
is no more serviceable. Walking is a better mode of 
locomotion than creeping, so the instinct to creep soon 
dies. Speech is found a better way than crying to 
attract attention to distress, so this instinct drops out. 
Many of our instincts not only would fail to be serv- 
iceable in our later lives, but would be positively in the 
way. Each serves its day, and then passes over into 
so modified a form as not to be recognized, or else 
drops out of sight altogether. 

Indeed it is difficult to see that some instincts serve Seemingly 
a useful purpose at any time. The pugnacity and instincts, 
greediness of childhood, its foolish fears, the bash- 
fulness of youth — these seem to be either useless or 
detrimental to development. In order to understand 
the workings of instinct, however, we must remember 
that it looks in two directions : into the future for its 
application, and into the past for its explanation. We 
should not be surprised if the experiences of a long 
past have left behind some tendencies which are not 
very useful under the vastly different conditions of to- 
day. Nor should we be too sure that an activity whose 
precise function in relation to development we cannot 
discover has no function at all. Each instinct must 
be considered not alone in the light of what it means 
to its possessor to-day, but of what it means to all his 



168 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



future development. The tail of a polliwog seems a 
very useless appendage so far as the adult frog is 
concerned, yet if the polliwog 's tail is cut off a per- 
fect frog never develops. 

A man may set the stream to turning his mill wheels 
to-day or wait for twenty years — the power is there 
ready for him when he wants it. Instincts must be 
utilized when they present themselves, else they dis- 
appear — never, in most cases, to return. Birds kept 
caged past the flying time never learn to fly well. The 
hunter must train his setter when the time is ripe, 
or the dog can never be depended upon. Ducks kept 
away from the water until full grown have almost 
as little inclination for it as chickens. The child whom 
the pressure of circumstances or unwise authority of 
parents keeps from mingling with playmates and par- 
ticipating in their plays and games when the social 
instinct is strong upon him, will in later life find him- 
self a hopeless recluse to whom social duties are a bore. 
The boy who does not hunt and fish and race and 
climb at the proper time for these things, will find 
his taste for them fade away, and he will become 
wedded to a sedentary life. The youth and maiden 
must be permitted to " dress up " when the impulse 
comes to them, or they are likely ever after to be 
careless in their attire. 

Most of our habits have their rise in instincts, and 
all desirable instincts should be seized upon and trans- 
formed into habits before they fade away. Says James 
in his remarkable chapter on Instinct; " In all peda- 
gogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, 
and to seize the wave of the pupils' interest in each 
successive subject before its ebb has come, so that 
knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired — 



INSTINCT 169 

a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which 
afterwards the individual may float. There is happy 
moment for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys 
collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors 
and botanists; then for initiating them into the har- 
monies of mechanics and the wonders of physical and 
chemical law. Later, introspective psychology and the 
metaphysical and religious mysteries take their turn; 
and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and 
worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. In 
each of us a saturation point is soon reached in all 
these things; the impetus of our purely intellectual 
zeal expires, and unless the topic is associated with 
some urgent personal need that keeps our wits con- 
stantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, 
and live on what we learned when our interest was 
fresh and instinctive, without adding to the store. ' ' ^ 

There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 

It will be impossible in this brief statement to give The more 
a complete catalogue of the human instincts, much h^man^^ 
less to discuss each in detail. We must content our- i^^stmcts. 
selves therefore with naming the more important in- 
stincts, and finally discussing a few of them: Suck- 
ing, biting, chewing, clasping objects with the fingers, 
carrying to the mouth, crying, smiling, sitti7ig up, 
standing, locomotion, vocalization, imitation, emula- 
tion, pugnacity, resentment, anger, sympathy, hunt- 
ing and fighting, fear, acquisitiveness, play, curiosity, 

1 " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XXIV. 



170 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

sociability, modesty, secretiveness, shame, love, and 
jealousy may be said to head the list of our instincts. 
It is impossible to draw an exact line between instinc- 
tive and emotional reactions, since the one shades over 
into the other; hence some of the instincts will be 
mentioned again as emotions. Thus such instincts as 
anger, fear, and love have also their characteristic 
emotional expression which is known by the same name 
as the corresponding instinct. The instincts which 
we will briefly discuss are imitation, fear, and play. 

No individual enters the world with a large enough 
stock of instincts to start him doing all the things 
necessary for his welfare. Instinct prompts him to 
eat when he is hungry, but does not tell him to use 
a knife and fork and spoon; it prompts him to use 
vocal speech, but does not say whether he shall use 
English, French, or German; it prompts him to be 
social in his nature, but does not specify that he shall 
say please and thank you, and take off his hat to 
ladies. The race did not find the specific modes in 
which these and many other things are to be done of 
sufficient importance to crystallize them in instincts, 
hence the individual must learn them as he needs 
them. The simplest way of accomplishing this is for 
each generation to copy the ways of doing things 
which are followed by the older generation among 
whom they are born. This is done through imita- 
tion. Imitation is the instinct to respond to a sug- 
gestion from another hy repeating his act. The in- 
stinct of imitation is active in the year-old child, it 
requires another year or two to reach its height, then 
it gradually grows less marked, but continues in some 
degree throughout life. The young child is practically 



INSTINCT 



171 



helpless in the matter of imitation. Instinct demands 
that he shall imitate, and he has no choice but to obey. 
His environment furnishes the models which he must 
imitate, whether they are good or bad. Before he is 
old enough for intelligent choice, he has imitated a 
multitude of acts about him; and habit has seized 
upon these acts and is weaving them into conduct and 
character. Older grown we may choose what we will 
imitate, but in our earlier years we are at the mercy 
of the models which are placed before us. 

If our mother tongue is the first we hear spoken, that 
will be our language ; but if we first hear Chinese, we 
will learn that with almost equal facility. If whatever 
speech we hear is well spoken, correct, and beautiful, 
so will our language be; if it is vulgar, or incorrect, 
or slangy, our speech will be of this kind. If the 
first manners which serve us as models are coarse and 
boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are culti- 
vated and refined, ours will be like them. If our 
models of conduct and morals are questionable, our 
conduct and morals will be of like type. Our man- 
ner of walking, of dressing, of thinking, of saying 
our prayers, even, originates in imitation. By imita- 
tion we adopt ready-made our social standards, our 
political faith, and our religious creeds. Our views 
of life and the values we set on its attainments are 
largely a matter of imitation. 

Yet given the same model, no two of us will imi- 
tate precisely alike. Your acts will be yours, and 
mine will be mine. This is because no two of us have 
just the same heredity, and hence cannot have pre- 
cisely similar instincts. There reside in our differ- 
ent personalities different powers of invention and 
originality, and these determine by how much the 



Imitation 
gives us 
language, 
conduct, 
and stand- 
ards. 



Individual- 
ity in 
imitation. 



172 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



product of imitation will vary from the model. Some 
remain imitators all their lives, while others use imi- 
tation as a means to the invention of better types than 
the original models. The person who is an imitator 
only, lacks individuality and initiative; the nation 
which is an imitator only, is stagnant and unpro- 
gressive. While imitation must be blind in both 
cases at first, it should be increasingly intelligent as 
the individual or the nation progresses. 

The much-quoted dictum that ** all consciousness 
is motor " has a direct application to imitation. It 
only means that we have a tendency to act on what- 
ever idea occupies the mind. Think of yawning or 
of clearing the throat, and the tendency is strong to 
do these things. We naturally respond to smile with 
smile and to frown with frown. And even the im- 
pressions coming to us from our material environment 
have their influence on our acts. Our response to 
these ideas may be a conscious one, as when a boy 
purposely stutters in order to mimic an unfortunate 
companion; or it may be unconscious, as when the 
boy unknowingly falls into the habit of stammering 
from hearing this kind of speech. The child may 
consciously seek to keep himself neat and clean so as 
to harmonize with a pleasant and well-kept home, or 
he may unconsciously become slovenly and cross- 
tempered from living in an ill-kept home where con- 
stant bickering is the rule. Often we deliberately 
imitate what seems desirable to us in other people, but 
probably far the greater proportion of the sugges- 
tions to which we respond are received and acted upon 
unconsciously. In conscious imitation we can select 
what models we shall imitate, and therefore protect 
ourselves in so far as our judgment of good and bad 



INSTINCT 173 

models is valid. In unconscious imitation, however, 
we are constantly responding to a stream of sugges- 
tions pouring in upon us hour after hour and day 
after day, with no protection but the leadings of our 
interests as they direct our attention now to this 
phase of our environment, and now to that. 

No small part of the influences which mold our lives 
comes from our material environment. Good clothes, 
artistic homes, beautiful pictures and decorations, 
attractive parks and lawns, well-kept streets, well- 
bound books — all these have a direct moral and edu- 
cative value; on the other hand, squalor, disorder, 
and ugliness are an incentive to ignorance and 
crime. Hawthorne tells in ' ' The Great Stone Face ' ' 
of the boy Ernest, listening to the tradition of a 
coming Wise Man who one day is to rule over the 
Valley. The story sinks deep into the boy's heart, 
and he thinks and dreams of the great and good man ; 
and as he thinks and dreams, he spends his boyhood 
days gazing across the valley at a distant mountain 
side whose rocks and cliffs nature had formed into the 
outlines of a human face remarkable for the noble- 
ness and benignity of its expression. He comes to 
love this Face and looks upon it as the prototype of 
the coming Wise Man, until lo! as he dwells upon 
it and dreams about it, the beautiful character 
which its expression typifies grows into his own life, 
and he himself becomes the long-looked-for Wise 
Man. 

More powerful than the influence of material en- Thein- 
vironment, however, is that of other personalities personality, 
upon us — the touch of life upon life. A living per- 
sonality contains a power which grips hold of us, 
electrifies us, inspires us, and compels us to new en- 



174 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

deavor, or else degrades and debases us. None has 
failed to feel at some time this life touch, and to bless 
or curse the day when its influence came upon him. 
Either consciously or unconsciously such a personality 
becomes our ideal and model : we idolize it, idealize it, 
and imitate it, until it becomes a part of us. Not 
only do we find these great personalities living in the 
flesh, but we find them also in books, from whose 
pages they speak to us, and to whose influence we 
respond. And not in the great personalities alone 
does the power to influence reside. From every life 
which touches ours, a stream of influence great or 
small is entering our life and helping to mold it. 
Nor are we to forget that this influence is reciprocal, 
and that we are reacting upon others up to the meas- 
ure of the powers that are in us. 

Probably in no instinct more than in that of fear 
can we find the reflections of all the past ages of life 
in the world, with its manifold changes, its dangers, 
its tragedies, its sufferings, and its deaths. The fears 
of childhood " are remembered at every step," and 
so are the fears through which the race has passed. 
Says Chamberlain: '' Every ugly thing told to the 
child, every shock, every fright given him, will re- 
main like splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his 
life long. The bravest old soldier, the most daring 
young reprobate, is incapable of forgetting them all 
— the masks, the bogies, ogres, hobgoblins, witches, 
and wizards, the things that bite and scratch, that nip 
and tear, that pinch and crunch, the thousand and 
one imaginary monsters of the mother, the nurse, or 
the servant, have had their efl^ect; and hundreds of 
generations have worked to denaturalize the brains 



INSTINCT 175 

of children. Perhaps no animal, not even those most 
susceptible to fright, has behind it the fear heredity 
of the child." 

President Hall calls attention to the fact that night Fear 
is now the safest time of the twenty-four hours; ser- ^^^^ ^^^' 
pents are no longer our most deadly enemies; 
strangers are not to be feared; neither are big eyes 
or teeth; there is no adequate reason why the wind, 
or thunder, or lightning should make children fran- 
tic as they do. But '' the past of man forever seems 
to linger in his present ' ' ; and the child, in being 
afraid of these things, is only summing up the fear 
experiences of the race and suffering all too many, 
of them in his short childhood. 

Most children are afraid in the dark. Who does 
not remember the terror of a dark room through 
which he had to pass, or, worse still, in which he had 
to go to bed alone, and there lie in a cold perspira- 
tion induced by a mortal agony of fright! The un- 
used doors which would not lock, and through which 
he expected to see the goblin come forth to get him! 
The dark shadows back under the bed where he was 
afraid to look for the hidden monster which he was 
sure was hiding there and yet dare not face! The 
lonely lane through which the cows were to be driven 
late at night, while every fence corner bristled with 
shapeless monsters lying in wait for boys ! And that 
hated dark closet where he was shut up " until he 
could learn to be good "! And the useless trapdoor 
in the ceiling. How often have we lain in the dim 
light at night and seen the lid lift. just a peep for 
ogre eyes to peer out, and, when the terror was grow- 
ing beyond endurance, close down, only to lift once 
and again, until from sheer weariness and exhaustion 



176 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Fear of 
being left 
alone. 



Fear a 
serious 
factor in 
the child's 
life. 



we fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of the 
hideous monster which inhabited the unused garret! 
Tell me that the old trapdoor never bent its hinges in 
response to either man or monster for twenty years? 
I know it is true, and yet I am not convinced. My 
childish fears have left a stronger impression than 
proof of mere facts can ever overrule. 

And the fear of being left alone. How big and 
dreadful the house seemed with the folks all gone! 
How we suddenly made close friends with the dog or 
the cat, even, in order that this bit of life might be 
near us ! Or, failing in this, we have gone out to the 
^ barn among the chickens and the pigs and the cows, 
and deserted the empty house with its torture of lone- 
liness. What was there so terrible in being alone? 
I do not know. I know only that to many children 
it is a torture more exquisite than the adult organism 
is fitted to experience. 

But why multiply the recollections? They bring 
a tremor to the strongest of us to-day. Who of us 
would choose to live through those childish fears 
again? Dream fears, fears of animals, fears of furry 
things, fears of ghosts and of death, dread of fatal 
diseases, fears of fire and of water, of strange per- 
sons, of storms, fears of things unknown and even 
unimagined, but all the more fearful! Would you 
all like to relive your childhood for its pleasures if 
you had to take along with them its sufferings? 
Would the race choose to live its evolution over again ? 
I do not know. But, for my own part, I should very 
much hesitate to turn the hands of time backward in 
either case. Would that the adults at life 's noonday, 
in remembering the childish fears of life's morning, 
might feel a sympathy for the children of to-day, 



INSTINCT 



177 



who are not yet escaped from the bonds of the fear 
instinct. Would that all might seek to quiet every 
foolish childish fear, instead of laughing at it or en- 
hancing it ! 



Small use to be a child unless one can play 
Karl Groos: ^' Perhaps the very existence of youth 
is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal 
does not play because he is young, but he is young 
because he must play. '* Play is a constant factor in 
all grades of animal life. The swarming insects, the 
playful kitten, the frisking lambs, the racing colt, 
the darting swallows, the maddening aggregation of 
blackbirds — these are but illustrations of the common 
impulse of all the animal world to play. Wherever 
freedom and happiness reside, there play is found; 
wherever play is lacking, there the curse has fallen 
and sadness and oppression reign. Play is the natural 
role in the paradise of youth; it is childhood's chief 
occupation. To toil without play, places man on a 
level with the beasts of burden. 

But why is play so necessary? Why is this im- 
pulse so deep-rooted in our natures? Why not com- 
pel our young to expend their boundless energy on 
productive labor? Why all this waste? Why have 
our child-labor laws? Why not shut recesses from 
our schools, and so save time for work? Is it true 
that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? 
Too true. For proof we need but gaze at the dull 
and lifeless faces of the prematurely old children as 
they pour out of the factories where child labor is 
employed. We need but follow the children who have 
had a playless childhood, into a narrow- and barren 
manhood. We need but to trace back the history of 



Says The in- 
stinct of 



play. 



178 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Play re- 
sults in 
freedom of 
initiative. 



Play trains 
to work. 



the dull and brutish men of to-day, and find that they 
were the playless children of yesterday. Play is as 
necessary to the child as food, as vital as sunshine, 
as indispensable as air. 

The keynote of play is freedom, freedom of phys- 
ical activity and mental initiative. In play the child 
makes his own plans, his imagination has free rein, 
originality is in demand, and constructive ability is 
placed under tribute. Here are developed a thou- 
sand tendencies which would never find expression in 
the narrow treadmill of labor alone. The child needs 
to learn to work ; but along with his work must be the 
opportunity for free and unrestricted activity, which 
can come only through play. The boy needs a chance 
to be a barbarian, a hero, an Indian. He needs to ride 
his broomstick steed on a dangerous raid, and to 
charge with lath sword the redoubts of a stubborn 
enemy. He needs to be a leader as well as a follower. 
In short, without in the least being aware of it, he 
needs to develop himself through his own activity — 
he needs freedom to play. If the child be a girl, 
there is no difference except in the character of the 
activities employed. 

And it is precisely out of these play activities that 
the later and more serious activities of life emerge. 
Play is the gateway by which we best enter the vari- 
ous fields of the world's work, whether our particular 
sphere be that of pupil or teacher in the schoolroom, 
of man in the busy marts of trade or in the profes- 
sions, or of farmer or mechanic. Play brings the 
whole self into the activity; it trains to habits of in- 
dependence and individual initiative, to strenuous and 
sustained effort, to endurance of hardship and fatigue, 
to social participation and the acceptance of victory 



INSTINCT 179 

and defeat. And these are the qualities needed by the 
man of success in his vocation. 

These facts make the play instinct one of the most Play in 
important in education. Froebel was the first to rec- ^ ^^^^tion. 
ognize the importance of play, and the kindergarten 
was an attempt to utilize its activities in the school. 
The introduction of this new factor into education 
has been attended, as might be expected, by many 
mistakes. Some have thought to recast the entire 
process of education into the form of games and plays, 
and thus to lead the child to possess the " Promised 
Land '* through aimlessly chasing butterflies in the 
pleasant fields of knowledge. It is needless to say that 
they have not succeeded. Others have mistaken the 
shadow for the substance, and introduced games and 
plays into the schoolroom which lack the very first 
element of play; namely, freedom of initiative and 
action on the part of the child. Educational theorists 
and teachers have invented games and occupations and 
taught them to the children, who go through with 
them much as they would with any other task, enjoy- 
ing the activity but missing the development which 
would come through a larger measure of self -direction. 

Work cannot take the place of play, neither can Work and 
play be substituted for work. Nor are the two antago- compte- 
nistic, but each is the complement of the other; for 
the activities of work grow immediately out of those 
of play, and each lends zest to the other. Those who 
have never learned to work and those who have never 
learned to play are equally lacking in their develop- 
ment. Further, it is not the name or character of an 
activity which determines w^hether it is play for the 
participant, but his attitude toward the activity. If 
the activity is performed for its own sake and not for 
13 



ments. 



180 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

some ulterior end, if it grows out of the interest of the 
child and involves the free and independent use of 
his powers of body and mind, if it is his, and not some 
one's else — then the activity possesses the chief char- 
acteristics of play. Lacking these, it cannot be play, 
whatever else it may be. 
Play points Play, like other instincts, besides serving the pres- 
past\nd ent, looks in two directions, into the past and into the 
future. future. From the past come the shadowy interests 

which, taking form from the touch of our environ- 
ment, determine the character of the play activities. 
From the future come the premonitions of the activi- 
ties that are to be. The boy adjusting himself to the 
requirements of the game, seeking control over his 
companions or giving in to them, is practicing in 
miniature the larger game which he will play in busi- 
ness or profession a little later. The girl in her play- 
house, surrounded by a nondescript family of dolls 
and pets, is unconsciously looking forward to a more 
perfect life when the responsibilities shall be a little 
more real. So let us not grudge our children the play- 
day of youth. Let us not rob them of one of their 
chief birthrights — a happy childhood full of blessed 
play. 

The utiiiz- Let US then hear the conclusion of the whole matter. 

stincts^" The undesirable instincts do not need encouragement. 
It is better to let them fade away from disuse. They 
are echoes from a distant past, and not serviceable in 
this better present. The desirable instincts we are to 
seize upon and utilize as starting points for the de- 
velopment of useful interests, good habits, and the 
higher emotional life. We should take them as they 
come, for their appearance is a sure sign that the 



INSTINCT 181 

organism is ready for and needs the activity they fore- 
shadow; and, furthermore, if they are not used when 
they present themselves, they disappear, never to 
return. 

EXERCISES 

What instincts have you noticed developing in children? 
What ones have you observed to fade away? Can you fix 
the age in both cases? 

Apply these questions to your own development as you 
remember it or can get it by tradition from your elders. 

What were your own fear experiences as a child? Do you 
discover the same in children to-day? 

What examples can you recount from your own experience 
of conscious imitation? of unconscious imitation? of the 
influence of environment? 

What is the application of the preceding question to our 
school buildings? 

Do you know any children who have no opportunity for 
play? If so, what is the effect on their development? 

How is the play instinct utilized in our present-day educa- 
tion? How could it be still further utilized? 

Have you ever observed that children under a dozen years 
of age cannot be depended upon for "team work" in their 
games? How do you explain this fact? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XXV. 
James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XXIV. 
Morgan, " Introduction to Comparative Psychology," Chap- 
ter XII. 
Kirkpatrick, " Fundamentals of Child Study," Chapter IV. 
Royce, " Outhnes of Psychology," pp. 35-42. 
AngeU, " Psychology," Chapters XV and XVI. 
Gross, "The Play of Man." 
Gross, "The Play of Animals." 



CHAPTER XII 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 



The im- 
portaBce of 
feeling. 



Definition 
of feeling. 



To convince a man's head is not enough, you must 
get hold on his feeling if you would be sure of moving 
him to action. Often have we known that some cer- 
tain line of action was right, and yet failed to follow 
it, because it was unpleasant. When decision was 
hanging in the balance we have piled up on one side 
all the motives we could discover: obligation, duty, 
sense of right, the good opinion of our friends, re- 
wards which will follow, and a dozen others as 
strong. Then to put on the other side we could find 
no motive except the one little, I don't want to; 
but this was heavy enough to outweigh all the rest 
and dictate the decision. Judgment, reason, and expe- 
rience may unite to tell us that a contemplated course 
is unwise, and imagination may reveal to us its disas- 
trous consequences, and yet its pleasures so appeal to 
us that we yield. Our feelings often prove a stronger 
motive than knowledge and will combined: they are 
a factor constantly to be reckoned with among our 
motives. 

. Feeling is the pleasant or unpleasant side of any 
state of consciousness. No phase of our mental life 
is without the feeling element. We look at the rain- 
bow with its beautiful and harmonious blending of 
colors, and a feeling of pleasure accompanies the sen- 
sation; then we turn and gaze at the sun, and a dis- 

182 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 



183 



agreeable feeling is the result. A strong feeling of 
pleasantness accompanies the experience of the volup- 
tuous warmth of a cozy bed on a cold morning, but 
the plunge between the icy sheets on the preceding 
evening was accompanied by the opposite feeling. The 
touch of a hand may occasion a thrill of ecstatic pleas- 
ure, or it may be accompanied by a feeling equally 
disagreeable. And so on through the whole range of 
sensation ; we not only know the various objects about 
us through sensation and perception, but we also feel 
while we know. Cognition, or the knowing processes, 
gives us our ' * whats ' ' ; and feeling, or the affective 
processes, gives us our " hows." What is yonder ob- 
ject ? A bouquet. How does it affect you ? Pleasure- 
ably. 

If, instead of the simpler sensory processes which 
we have just considered, we take the more complex 
processes, such as memory, imagination, and think- 
ing, the case is no different. Who has not reveled 
in the pleasure accompanying the memories of past 
joys? On the other hand, who is free from all un- 
pleasant memories — from regrets, from pangs of re- 
ihorse ? Who has not dreamed away an hour in 
pleasant anticipation of some desired object, or spent 
a miserable hour in dreading some calamity which 
imagination pictured to himl Feeling also accom- 
panies our thought processes. Everyone has expe- 
rienced the feeling of the pleasure of intellectual vic- 
tory over some difficult problem which had baffled the 
reason, or over some doubtful case in which our judg- 
ment proved correct. And likewise none have escaped 
the feeling of unpleasantness which accompanies in- 
tellectual defeat. Whatever the contents of our men- 
tal stream, '' we find in them, everywhere present, a 



Feeling re- 
sulting 
from 
sensory- 
processes. 



Feeling re- 
sulting 
from the 
complex 
mental 
processes. 



184 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Feelings 
seem to be 
of very 
different 



certain color of passing estimate, an immediate sense 
that they are worth something to us at any given mo- 
ment, or that they then have an interest to us." 

Feeling has two qualities, or is of two classes, pleas- 
ant and unpleasant. It ranges from the highest ec- 
stasy of pleasure down the scale, through an imagi- 
nary zero point where no feeling exists, and then up 
the scale of the unpleasant until unbearable pain is 
reached. Nowhere in the scale, however, do we find 
any other quality of feeling than these two. It is 
probable that there is so little feeling connected with 
many of the humdrum and habitual experiences of 
our everyday lives, that we are but slightly, if at all, 
aware of a feeling state in connection with them. Yet 
a state of consciousness with absolutely no feeling side 
to it is as unthinkable as the obverse side of a coin 
without the reverse. Some sort of feeling tone or mood 
is always present. The width of the affective neutral 
zone — ^that is, of a feeling state so little marked as 
not to be discriminated as either pleasant or unpleas- 
ant — varies with different persons, and with the same 
person at different times. It is conditioned largely by 
the amount of attention given in the direction of 
feeling, and also on the fineness of the feeling power 
of discrimination. It is safe to say that the zero range 
is usually so small as to be negligible. 

It is somewhat hard to believe on first thought that 
feeling comprises but the two classes given. For have 
we not often felt bad from a toothache, from not being 
able to take a long-planned trip, from the loss of a 
dear friend? Surely these are very different classes 
of feelings! Likewise we have been happy from the 
very joy of living, from being praised for some well- 
doing, or from the presence of friend or lover. And 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 185 

here again we seem to have widely different classes 
of feelings. 

We must remember, however, that feeling is always But it is 

■L J J.1 • 7 tj. 1 chiefly the 

based on somethmg known, it never appears alone knowledge 
in consciousness as mere pleasures or pains. The mind ^^^^^^ 
must have a basis of cognition in order that we may varies, 
have something about which to feel. The " what " 
must precede the '' how." What we commonly call 
a feeling is a complex state of consciousness in which 
feeling predominates, but which has, nevertheless, a 
hasis of sensation, or memory, or some other cognitive 
process. And what varies so greatly in the different 
cases of the illustrations just given was precisely this 
knowledge element, and not the feeling element. A 
feeling of unpleasantness is a feeling of unpleasant- 
ness whether it comes from an aching tooth or from 
the loss of a friend. It may differ in degree, and the 
entire mental states of which the feeling is a part may 
differ vastly, but the simple feeling itself is the same. 

The sum total of all the feeling accompanying the Mood, or 
various sensory and thought processes at any given tone, 
time constitutes what we may call our feeling tone. 
During most of our waking hours, and, indeed, during 
our sleeping hours as well, a multitude of sensory cur- 
rents are pouring into the cortical centers. At the 
present moment we can hear the rumble of a wagon, 
the chirp of a cricket, the chatter of distant voices, 
and a hundred other sounds besides. At the same 
time the eye is appealed to by an infinite variety of 
stimuli in light, color, and objects; the skin responds 
to many contacts and temperatures; and every other 
type of end organ of the body is acting as a 
'' sender " to telegraph a message in to the brain. 
Add to these the powerful currents which are con- 



186 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



stantly being sent to the cortex from the visceral or- 
gans — those of respiration, of circulation, of digestion 
and assimilation. And then finally add the central 
processes which accompany the flight of images 
through our minds — our meditations, memories, and 
imaginings, our cogitations and volitions. Thus we 
see what a complex our feelings must be, and how 
impossible to have any moment in which some feeling 
is not present as a part of our mental stream. It is 
this complex, now made up chiefly on the basis of the 
sensory currents coming in from the end organs or 
the visceral organs, and now on the basis of those in 
the cortex connected with our thought life, which con- 
stitutes the entire feeling tone, or mood. 

Mood depends on the character of the aggregate of 
nerve currents entering the cortex, and changes as the 
character of the current varies. If the currents run 
on much the same from hour to hour, then our mood 
is correspondingly constant; if the currents are 
variable, our mood also will be variable. Not only is 
mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for 
its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. 
It serves as a background or setting whose hue is re- 
flected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber 
and dark, and all the world looks gloomy ; on the other 
hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the 
world puts on a smile. It is told of one of the early 
circuit riders among the New England ministry, that 
he made the following entries in his diary, thus well 
illustrating the point: ^' Wed. Eve. Arrived at the 
home of Bro. Brown late this evening, hungry and 
tired after a long day in the saddle. Had a bountiful 
supper of cold pork and beans, warm bread, bacon and 
eggs, coffee, and rich pastry. I go to rest feeling that 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 187 

my witness is clear ; the future is bright ; I feel called 
to a great and glorious work in this place. Bro. 
Brown's family are godly people." The next entry 
was as follows: '' Thur. Morn. Awakened late this 
morning after a troubled night. I am very much de- 
pressed in soul ; the way looks dark ; far from feeling 
called to work among this people, I am beginning to 
doubt the safety of my own soul. I am afraid the de- 
sires of Bro. Brown and his family are set too much 
on carnal things. ' ' A dyspeptic is usually a pessimist, 
and an optimist always keeps a bright mood. 

Mood influences our judgments and decisions. The And in- 
prattle of children may be grateful music to our ears our^udg- 
when we are in one mood, and excruciatingly discor- ^^Tsfons^ 
dant noise when we are in another. What appeals to 
us as a good practical joke one day, may seem a piece 
of unwarranted impertinence on another. A proposi- 
tion which looks entirely plausible under the sanguine 
mood induced by a persuasive orator, may appear 
wholly untenable a few hours later. Decisions which 
seemed warranted when we were in an angry mood, 
often appear unwise or unjust when we have become 
more calm. Motives which easily impel us to action 
when the world looks bright, fail to move us when the 
mood is somber. The feelings of impending peril and 
calamity which are an inevitable accompaniment of the 
'' blues," are speedily dissipated when the sun breaks 
through the clouds and we are ourselves again. 

A bright and hopeful mood quickens every power Moodin- 
and enhances every effort, while a hopeless mood limits effort!^^ 
power and cripples effort. The football team which 
goes into the game discouraged never plays to the 
limit. The student who attacks his lesson under the 
conviction of defeat can hardly hope to succeed, while 



188 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Tempera- 
ment. 



the one who enters upon his work confident of his 
power to master it has the battle already half won. 
The world's best work is done not by those who live 
in the shadow of discouragement and doubt, but by 
those in whose breast hope springs eternal. The op- 
timist is a benefactor of the race if for no other reason 
than the sheer contagion of his hopeful spirit; the 
pessimist contributes neither to the world's welfare 
nor its happiness. Youth's proverbial enthusiasm and 
dauntless energy rest upon the supreme hopefulness 
which characterizes the mood of the young. 

The sum total of our moods gives us our disposi- 
tions. Whether these are pleasant or unpleasant, 
cheerful or gloomy, will depend on the predominating 
character of the moods which enter into them. As 
well expect to gather grapes of thorns or figs of 
thistles, as to secure a desirable disposition out of un- 
desirable moods. A sunny disposition never comes 
from gloomy moods, nor a hopeful one out of the 
*' blues." And it is our disposition, more than the 
power of our reason which, after all, determines our 
desirability as friends and companions. The person 
of surly disposition can hardly make a desirable 
companion, no matter what his intellectual qualities 
may be. We may live very happily with one who 
cannot follow the reasoning of a Newton, but it is hard 
to live with a person chronically subject to ^' black 
moods." Nor can we put the responsibility for our 
dispositions off on our ancestors. They are not an 
inheritance, but a growth. Slowly, day by day, and 
mood by mood, we build up our dispositions until 
finally they come to characterize us. 

Some are, however, more predisposed to certain 
types of mood than are others. The organization of 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 189 

our nervous system which we get through heredity 
undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone 
into which we most easily fall. We call this predis- 
position temperament. On the effects of tempera- 
ment, our ancestors must divide the responsibility with 
us. I say divide the responsibility, for even if we 
find ourselves predisposed toward a certain undesir- 
able type of moods, there is no reason why we should 
give up to them. Even in spite of hereditary pre- 
dispositions, we can still largely determine for our- 
selves what our moods, and hence our dispositions, 
are to be. If we have a tendency toward cheerful, 
quiet, and optimistic moods, the psychologist names 
our temperament the sanguine ; if we are easily excited 
and irritable, with a tendency toward sullen or angry 
moods, the choleric; if we are given to frequent fits 
of the ' ' blues, " if we usually look on the dark side of 
things and have a tendency toward moods of discour- 
agement and the '^ dumps," the melancholic; if hard 
to rouse, and given to indolent and indifferent moods, 
the phlegmatic. Whatever be our temperament, it is 
one of the most important factors in our character. 

Besides the more or less transitory feeling states Sentimenta 
which we have called moods, there exists also a class 
of feelings which contain more of the complex intel- 
lectual element, are withal of rather a higher nature, 
and much more permanent than our moods. We call 
these our sentiments. Our sentiments comprise the 
somewhat constant level of feeling mixed with cogni- 
tion, which we name sympathy, friendship, love, 
patriotism, religious faith, selfishness, pride, vanity, 
etc. Like our dispositions, our sentiments are a 
growth of months and years. Unlike our dispositions, 
however, our sentiments are relatively independent of 



190 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION ■ 

the physiological undertone which accompanies and 
becomes a part of our experience, and depend more 
largely upon the intellectual element as a basis. A 
sluggish liver might throw us into an irritable mood 
and, if the condition were long continued, might re- 
sult in a surly disposition; but it would hardly per- 
manently destroy one's patriotism and make him turn 
traitor to his country. 

Sentiments have their beginning in concrete experi- 
ences in which feeling is a predominant element, and 
grow through the multiplication of these experiences 
much as the concept is developed through many per- 
cepts. There is a residual element left behind each 
separate experience in both cases. In the case of the 
concept the residual element is intellectual, and in 
the case of the sentiment it is a complex in which 
the feeling element is predominant. How this comes 
about is easily seen by means of an illustration or 
two. The mother feeds her child when he is hungry, 
and an agreeable feeling is produced; she puts him 
into the bath and snuggles him in her arms, and the 
experiences are pleasant. The child comes to look 
upon the mother as one whose especial function is to 
make things pleasant for him, so he comes to be happy 
in her presence, and long for her in her absence. He 
finally grows to love his mother not alone for the 
countless times she has given him pleasure, but for 
what she herself is. The feelings connected at first 
wholly with pleasant experiences coming through the 
ministrations of the mother, strengthened no doubt 
by instinctive tendencies toward affection, and later 
enhanced by a fuller realization of what a mother's 
care and sacrifice mean, grow at last into a deep, 
forceful, abiding sentiment of love for the mother. 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 191 

Likewise with the sentiment of patriotism. In so From ex- 
far as our patriotism is a true patriotism and not a P^"^'^^^^- 
noisy clamor, it had its rise in feelings of gratitude 
and love when we contemplated the deeds of heroism 
and sacrifice for the flag, and the blessings which 
come to us from our relations as citizens to our coun- 
try. If we have had concrete cases brought to our 
experience, as, for example, our property saved from 
destruction at the hands of a mob or our lives saved 
from a hostile foreign foe, the patriotic sentiment 
will be all the stronger. So we may carry the illustra- 
tion into all the sentiments. Our religious sentiments 
of adoration, love, and faith have their origin in our 
belief in the care, love, and support from a higher 
Being typified to us as children by the care, love, and 
support of our parents. Pride arises from the appre- 
ciation or overappreciation of oneself, his attain- 
ments, or his belongings. Selfishness has its genesis 
in the many instances in which pleasure results from 
ministering to self. In all these cases it is seen that 
our sentiments develop out of our experiences; they 
are the permanent but ever-growing results which we 
have to show for experiences which are somewhat 
long continued, and in which a certain feeling quality 
is a strong accompaniment of the cognitive part of 
the experience. 

Our sentiments, like our dispositions, are not only a The in- 
natural growth from the experiences upon which they sentiment, 
are fed, but they in turn have large influence in de- 
termining the direction of our further development. 
Our sentiments furnish the soil which is either favor- 
able or hostile to the growth of new experiences. One 
in whom the sentiment of true patriotism is deep- 
rooted will find it much harder to respond to a sug- 



192 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



gestion to betray his country's honor on battlefield, 
in legislative hall, or in private life, than one lacking 
in this sentiment. The boy who has a strong senti- 
ment of love for his mother will find this a restrain- 
ing influence in the face of temptation to commit 
deeds which would wound her feelings. A deep and 
abiding faith in God is fatal to the growth of pessi- 
mism, distrust, and a self -centered life. One's senti- 
ments are a safe gauge of his character. Let us know 
a man's sentiments on religion, morality, friendship, 
honesty, and the other great questions of life, and 
little remains to be known. If he is right on these, 
he may well be trusted in other things ; if he is wrong 
on these, there is little to build upon. 

Literature has drawn its best inspiration and 
choicest themes from the field of our sentiments. The 
sentiment of friendship has given us our David and 
Jonathan, our Damon and Pythias, and our Tennyson 
and Hallam. The sentiment of love has inspired count- 
less masterpieces; without its aid most of our fiction 
would lose its plot, and most of our poetry its charm. 
Religious sentiment inspired Milton to write the 
world's greatest epic, '* Paradise Lost." The senti- 
ment of patriotism has furnished an inexhaustible 
theme for the writer and the orator. Likewise if we 
go into the field of music and art, we find that the 
best efforts of the masters are clustered around some 
human sentiment which has appealed to them, and 
which they have immortalized by expressing it on can- 
vas or in marble, that it may appeal to others and 
cause the sentiment to grow in them. 

The sentiments furnish the deepest, the most con- 
stant, and the most powerful motives which control 
our lives. Such sentiments as patriotism, liberty, and 



FEELING AND ITS FUNCTION 193 

religion have called a thousand armies to struggle 
and die on ten thousand battlefields, and have given 
martyrs courage to suffer in the fires of persecution. 
Sentiments of friendship and love have prompted 
countless deeds of self-sacrifice and loving devotion. 
Sentiments of envy, pride, and jealousy have changed 
the boundary lines of nations, and have prompted 
the committing of ten thousand unnamable crimes. 
Slowly day by day from the cradle to the grave we 
are weaving into our lives the threads of sentiment, 
which at last become so many cables to bind us to 
good or evil. 

The feeling which we call interest is so important interest 
as a motive in our lives, and so colors our acts and emotion 
determines our endeavors, that we will devote another ^|^^^** 
discussion to this topic. Following this we shall have chapter, 
to consider the still more complex feelings, the emo- 
tions. 

EXERCISES 

Mention sensations which are pleasant; which are un- 
pleasant. 

Are you subject to changing moods? If so, what is their 
character? Can you account for these changes? 

Can you recall an instance in which some dark mood was 
caused by a physical condition? What is your characteristic 
mood in the morning after sleeping in an ill- ventilated room? 
After eating indigestible food at a late hour? 

What do you do to keep from having the "blues"? To 
get out of them when you once have them? 

What kind of disposition do you think you have? How 
did you get it? 

Can you classify your temperament from the four types 
given? Is it possible that one may have a temperament 
which none of these classes describes? Do you know any- 



194 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

thing in your heredity which would account for your tem- 
perament? 

Can you measure more or less accurately the extent to 
which your feelings act as motives in your life? Are feelings 
alone a safe guide? 

Make a Ust of the sentiments which should be cultivated; 
of those which should be discouraged. 

Now make a list of those which you are cultivating, and of 
those which you are trying to suppress. 

What sentiments prompted the Pilgrims to come to Amer- 
ica? What sentiments prompted the colonists to take up 
arms against England? 

Mention other historical events or incidents and discover 
the sentiments which prompted them. 

Apply the same test to various cases of individual action. 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Angell, " Psychology," Chapters XIII and XIV. 
Murray, " An Introduction to Psychology," Part II. 
Ribot, " The Psychology of the Emotions," Introduction. 
Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter X. 
Royce, " Outhnes of Psychology," Chapter VII. 



CHAPTER XIII 
INTEREST 

We saw in the last discussion that personal habits interest a 
have their rise in race habits or instincts. Let us now agent 
see how interest helps the individual to select from his oSerlcts. 
instinctive acts those which are useful to build into 
personal habits. Instinct impartially starts the child 
in the performance of many different activities, but 
does not dictate what particular acts shall be retained, 
and hence serve as the basis for habits. Interest comes 
in at this point and says, '* This act is of more value 
than that act ; continue this act and drop that. ' ' In- 
stinct prompts the babe to countless movements of 
body and limb. Interest picks out those which are 
most vitally connected with the w^elfare of the organ- 
ism, and the child comes to prefer these rather than 
the others. Thus it is that out of the random move- 
ments of arms and legs and head and body we finally 
develop the coordinated activities which are infinitely 
more useful than the random ones were. And these 
activities, originating in instincts, and selected by in- 
terest, are soon crystallized into habits. 

The same truth holds for mental activities as for True when 
physical. A thousand channels lie open for your ourthink- 
stream of thought at this moment, but your interest ^^s- 
has beckoned it into the one particular channel which, 
for the time, at least, appears of the greatest subjective 
value; and it is now following that channel unless 
14 195 



196 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The na- 
ture of 
interest. 



your will has compelled it to leave that for another. 
Your thinking as naturally follows your interest as the 
needle does the magnet, hence your thought activities 
are conditioned largely by your interests. This is 
equivalent to saying that your mental habits rest back 
finally upon your interests. 

Everyone knows what it is to be interested ; but in- 
terest, like other elementary states of consciousness, 
cannot be rigidly defined. (1) Subjectively consid- 
ered, interest may be looked upon as a feeling attitude 
which assigns our activities their place in a subjective 
scale of values, and hence selects among them. (2) 
Objectively considered, an interest is the object which 
calls forth the feeling. (3) Functionally considered, 
interest is the dynamic phase of consciousness. 

If you are interested in driving a horse rather than 
in riding a bicycle, it is because the former has a 
greater subjective value to you than the latter. If 
you are interested in reading these w^ords instead of 
thinking about the next social function or the last pic- 
nic party, it is because at this moment the thought 
suggested appeals to you as of more value than the 
other lines of thought. From this it follows that your 
standards of values are revealed in the character of 
your interests. The young man who is interested in 
the race track, in gaming, and in low resorts confesses 
by this fact that these things occupy a high place 
among the things which appeal to him as subjectively 
valuable. The mother whose interests are chiefly in 
clubs and other social organizations places these 
higher in her scale of values than her home. The 
reader who can become interested only in light, trashy 
literature must admit that matter of this type ranks 
higher in his subjective scale of values than the works 



INTEREST 



197 



of the masters. Teachers and students whose strongest 
interest is in grade marks value these more highly 
than true attainment. For, whatever may be our 
claims or assertions, interest is finally an infallible 
barometer of the values we assign to our activities. 

In the case of some of our feelings it is not always The ob- 
possible to ascribe an objective side to them. A feeling Jfnnterest^ 
of ennui, of impending evil, or of bounding vivacity, 
may be produced by an -unanalyzable complex of 
causes. But interest, while it is related primarily to 
the activities of the self, is carried over from the activ- 
ity to the object which occasions the activity. That is, 
interest has both an objective and a subjective side. 
On the subjective side a certain activity connected 
with self-expression is worth so much ; on the objective 
side a certain object is worth so much as related to 
this self-expression. Thus we say, I have an interest 
in books or in business; my daily activities, my self- 
expression, are governed with reference to these ob- 
jects. They are my interests. 

Many of our milder feelings terminate within our- 
selves, never attaining sufficient force as motives to 
impel us to action. Not so with interest. Its very 
nature is dynamic. Whatever it seizes upon becomes 
ipso facto an object for some activity, for some form 
of expression of the self. Are we interested in a new 
book, we must read it; in a new invention, we must 
see it, handle it, test it ; in some vocation or avocation, 
we must pursue it. Interest is impulsive. It gives its 
possessor no opportunity for lethargic rest and quiet, 
but constantly urges him to action. Grown ardent, 
interest becomes enthusiasm, " without which," says 
Emerson, " nothing great was ever accomplished." 
Are we an Edison, with a strong interest centered in 



Interest is 
dynamic. 



198 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

mechanical invention, it will drive us day and night 
in a ceaseless activity which scarcely gives us time for 
food and sleep. Are we a Lincoln, with an undying 
interest in the Union, this motive will make possible 
superhuman efforts for the accomplishment of our end. 
Are we a Luther, swayed by an unflagging interest 
in the reformation of a church, miracles of achieve- 
ment will follow our untiring efforts. Are we man or 
woman anywhere, in any walk of life, so we are domi- 
nated by mighty interests grown into enthusiasm for 
some object, we shall find great purposes growing 
within us, and our life will be one of activity and 
achievement. On the contrary, a life which has de- 
veloped no great interest lacks motive power. Of 
necessity such a life must be devoid of purpose and 
hence barren of results, counting little while it is being 
lived, and little missed by the world when it is gone. 
Habit an- While, as we have seen, interest is necessary to the 

tolnterest. formation of habits, yet habits once formed are an- 
tagonistic to interest. That is, acts which are so 
habitually performed that they ' ' do themselves ' ' are 
accompanied by a minimum of interest. They come 
to be done without attentive consciousness, hence in- 
terest cannot attach to their performance. Many of 
the activities which make up the daily round of our 
lives are of this kind. As long as habit is being modi- 
fied in some degree, as long as we are improving in 
our ways of doing things, interest will still cling to 
the process ; but let us once settle into an unmodified 
rut, and interest quickly fades away. We then have 
the conditions present which make of us either a 
machine or a drudge. 

We may have an interest either (1) in the doing of 
an act, or (2) in the end sought through the doing. 



INTEREST 199 

In the first instance we call the interest immediate, or Two types 
direct; in the second instance, mediate, or indirect. 
If in our work we do not find an interest in the doing, 
or if it has become positively disagreeable so that we 
loathe its performance, then there must be some ulti- 
mate end for which the task is being performed, and 
in which there is a strong interest, else the whole 
process will be the veriest drudgery. If the end is 
sufficiently interesting it may serve to throw a halo 
of interest over the whole process connected with it. 
The following instance illustrates this fact : A twelve- 
year-old boy was told by his father that if he would 
make the box of an automobile at his bench in the 
manual training school, the father would purchase the 
running gear for it and give the machine to the boy. 
In order to secure the coveted prize, the boy had to 
master the arithmetic necessary for making the calcu- 
lations, and the drawing necessary for making the 
plans to scale before the teacher in manual training 
would allow him to take up the work of construction. 
The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic 
and drawing, and consequently was dull in them 
both. Under this incentive, however, he took hold of 
them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the 
remainder of the class, and was able to make his cal- 
culations and drawings within a term. He secured 
his automobile a few months later, and still retained 
his interest in arithmetic and drawing. 

Interest of the indirect type, which does not attach indirect 
to the process, but comes from some more or less dis- a^motfve^^ 
tant end, most of us find much less potent than in- 
terest which is immediate. This is especially true 
unless the end be one of intense desire and not too 
distant. The assurance to a boy that he must get his 



200 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Indirect 
interest 
alone in- 
sufl&cient. 



lessons well because he will need to be an educated 
man ten years hence when he goes into business for 
himself does not compensate for the lack of interest 
in the lessons of to-day. 

Yet it is necessary in the economy of life that both 
children and adults should learn to work under the 
incitement of indirect interests. Much of the work 
we do is for an end which is more desirable than the 
work itself. It will always be necessary to sacrifice 
present pleasure for future good. Ability to work 
cheerfully for a somewhat distant end saves much of 
our work from becoming mere drudgery. If interest 
is removed from hoth the process and the end, no in- 
ducement is left to work except compulsion ; and this 
if continued, results in the lowest type of effort. It 
puts a man on a level with the beast of burden, which 
constantly shirks its work. 

Interest coming from an end instead of inhering 
in the process may finally lead to an interest in the 
work itself ; but if it does not, the worker is in danger 
of being left a drudge at last. To be more than a 
slave to his work one must ultimately find the work 
worth doing for its own sake. The man who per- 
forms his work solely because he has a wife and babies 
at home will never be an artist in his trade or pro- 
fession; the student who masters a subject only be- 
cause he must know it for an examination is not 
developing the traits of a scholar. The question of 
interest in the process makes the difference between 
the one who works because he loves to work and the 
one who toils because he must — it makes the difference 
between the artist and the drudge. The drudge does 
only what he must when he works, the artist all he 
can. The drudge longs for the end of labor, the 



INTEREST 201 

artist for it to begin. The drudge studies how he may 
escape his labor, the artist how he may better his and 
ennoble it. 

To labor when there is joy in the work is elevating, 
to labor under the lash of compulsion is degrading. 
It matters not so much what a man's occupation as 
how it is performed. A coachman driving his team 
down the crowded street better than anyone else could 
do it, and glorying in that fact, may be a true artist 
in his occupation, and be ennobled through his work. 
A statesman molding the affairs of a nation as no one 
else could do it, or a scholar leading the thought of 
his generation is subject to the same law; in order to 
secure the best and highest personal development from 
the activities in which he is engaged, and in order to 
give the best grade of service of which he is capable, 
man must find a joy in the performance of the work 
as well as in the end sought through its performance. 
No matter how high the position or how refined the 
work, the worker 'becomes a slave to his labor unless 
interest in its performance saves him. 

Since our interests are always connected with our interests 
activities, it follows that many interests will have 
their birth, grow to full strength, and then fade away 
as the corresponding instincts which are responsible 
for the activities pass through these stages. This 
only means that interest in play develops at the time 
when the play activities are seeking expression; that 
interest in the opposite sex becomes strong when in- 
stinctive tendencies are directing the attention to the 
choice of a mate ; and that interest in abstract studies 
comes when the development of the brain enables us 
to carry on logical trains of thought. All of us can 
recall many interests which were once strong, and are 



202 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



now weak or else have altogether passed away. Hide- 
and-seek, Pussy-wants-a-corner, excursions to the little 
fishing pond, securing the colored chromo at school, 
the care of pets, reading blood-and-thunder stories or 
sentimental ones — interest in these things belongs to 
our past, or has left but a faint shadow. Others have 
come, and these in turn will also disappear and other 
new ones yet appear as long as we keep on acquiring 
new experience. 

Of course this means that we must take advantage 
of interests when they appear if we wish to utilize 
and develop them. How many people there are who 
at one time felt an interest impelling them to culti- 
vate their taste for music, art, or literature and said 
they would do this at some convenient season, and 
finally found themselves without a taste for these 
things! How many of us have felt an interest in 
some benevolent work, but at last discovered that our 
inclination had died before we found time to help 
the cause ! How many of us, young as we are, do not 
at this moment lament the passing of some interest 
from our lives, or are now watching the dying of 
some interest which we had fondly supposed was as 
stable as Gibraltar? The drawings of every interest 
which appeals to us is a voice crying, " Now is the 
appointed time ! ' ' What impulse urges us to-day to 
become or do, we must begin at once to be or perform 
if we would attain to the coveted end. 

Nor are we to look upon these transitory interests 
as useless. They come to us not only as a race heri- 
tage, but they impel us to activities which are imme- 
diately useful, or else prepare us for the later battles 
of life. But even aside from this important fact it 
is worth everything just to he interested. For it is 



INTEREST 203 

only through the impulsion of interest that we first 
learn to put forth effort in any true sense of the word, 
and interest furnishes the final foundation upon 
which volition rests. Without interest the greatest 
powers may slumber in us unawakened, and abilities 
capable of the highest attainment rest satisfied with 
commonplace mediocrity. No one will ever know 
how many Gladstones and Leibnitzes the world has 
lost simply because their interests were never gotten 
hold of in such a way as to start them on the road 
to achievement. It matters less what the interest be, 
so it be not bad, than that there shall be some great 
interest to compel endeavor, test the strength of en- 
durance, and lead to habits of achievement. 

I said early in the discussion that interest is select- The neces- 
ive among our activities, picking . out those which selection 
appear to be of the most value to us. In the same fjj^e^l^g^^ 
manner there must be a selection among our interests 
themselves. It is possible for us to become interested 
in so many lines of activity that we do none of them 
well. This leads to a life so full of hurry and stress 
that we forget life in our busy living. Says James 
with respect to the necessity of making a choice 
among our interests: " With most objects of desire, 
physical nature restricts our choice to but one of 
many represented goods, and even so it is here. I 
am often confronted by the necessity of standing by 
one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. 
Not that I v/ould not, if I could, be both handsome 
and fat, and well dressed, and a great athlete, and 
make a million a year; be a wit, a hon vivant, and a 
lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, 
statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 
* tone poet ' and saint. But the thing is simply im- 



204 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Interests 
may be 
too narrow. 



Speciali- 
zation in 
interests 
should not 
come too 
early. 



possible. The millionaire 's work would run counter to 
the saint's; the hon vivant and the philosopher would 
trip each other up ; the philosopher and the lady-killer 
could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. 
Such different characters may conceivably at the out- 
set of life be alike possible to man. But to make any 
one of them actual, the rest must more or less be 
suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, 
deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick 
out the one on which to stake his salvation. ' ' 

On the other hand, it is just as possible for our 
interests to be too narrow as too broad. The one who 
has cultivated no interests outside of his daily round 
of humdrum activities does not get enough out of 
life. It is possible to become so engrossed with 
making a living that we forget to live — to become so 
habituated to some narrow treadmill of labor with 
the limited field of thought suggested by its environ- 
ment, that we miss the richest experiences of life. 
Many there are who live a barren, trivial, and self- 
centered life because they fail to see the significant 
and the beautiful which lie just beyond where their in- 
terests reach ! Many there are so taken up with their 
own petty troubles that they have no heart of sym- 
pathy for fellow humanity! Many there are so ab- 
sorbed with their own little achievements that they 
fail to catch step with the progress of the age ! 

It is not well to specialize too early in our inter- 
ests. We miss too many rich fields which lie ready 
for the harvesting, and whose gleaning would enrich 
our lives. The student who is so buried in books that 
he has no time for athletic recreations or social diver- 
sions is making a mistake equally with the one who is 
so enthusiastic an athlete and social devotee that he 



INTEREST 205 

neglects his studies. Likewise, the youth who is so 
taken up with the study of one particular line that he 
applies himself to this at the expense of all other 
lines is inviting a distorted growth. Youth is the 
time for pushing the sky line back on all sides; it is 
the time for cultivating diverse and varied lines of 
interests if we would grow into a rich experience in 
our later lives. The physical must be developed, but 
not at the expense of the mental, and vice versa. 
The social must not be neglected, but it must not be 
indulged to such an extent that other interests suffer. 
Interest in amusements and recreations should be 
cultivated, but these should never run counter to the 
moral and religious. Specialization is necessary, but 
specialization in our interests should rest upon a broad 
field of fundamental interests, in order that the selec- 
tion of the special line may be an intelligent one, 
and that our specialty shall not prove a rut in which 
we become so deeply buried that we are lost to the 
best in life. 

It behooves us, then, to find a proper balance in cul- A proper 
tivating our interests, making them neither too broad beSught* 
nor too narrow. We should deliberately seek to dis- f^p^^f^^"'" 
cover those which are strong enough to point the way 
to a life vocation, but this should not be done until 
we have had an opportunity to become acquainted 
with various lines of interests. Otherwise our decision 
in this important matter may be based merely on a 
whim. We should also decide what interests we should 
cultivate for our own personal development and hap- 
piness, and for the service we are to render in a sphere 
outside our immediate vocation. We should consider 
avocations as well as vocations. Whatever interests 
are selected should be carried to efficiency. Better a 



interests. 



206 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Interest 
not an- 
tagonistic 
to effort, 



reasonable number of carefully selected interests well 
developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude 
of interests which lead us into so many fields that 
we can at best get but a smattering of each, and 
that by neglecting the things which should mean 
the most to us. Our interests should lead us to 
live what Wagner calls a '' simple life," but not a 
narrow one. 

Some educators have feared that in finding our occu- 
pations interesting, we shall lose all power of effort 
and self-direction ; that the will, not being called suf- 
ficiently into requisition, must suffer from non-use; 
that we shall come to do the interesting and agreeable 
things well enough, but fail before the disagreeable. 
This question will be discussed more fully in the chap- 
ter on the will, but one or two observations are in place 
here. In the first place it may be said that the devel- 
opment of the will does not come through our being 
forced to do acts in which there is absolutely no in- 
terest. Work done under compulsion never secures 
the full self in its performance. It is done mechanic- 
ally and usually under such a spirit of rebellion on 
the part of the doer, that the advantage of such train- 
ing may well be doubted. Nor are we safe in assum- 
ing that tasks done without interest as the motive are 
always performed under the direction of the will. It 
is far more likely that they are done under some ex- 
ternal compulsion, and that the will has, after all, but 
very little to do with it. A boy may get an uninterest- 
ing lesson at school without much pressure from his 
will, providing he is sufficiently afraid of the master. 
In order that the will may receive training through 
compelling the performance of certain acts, it must 
have a reasonably free field, with external pressure re- 



INTEREST 207 

moved. The compelling force must come from within, 
and not from without. 

On the other hand, there is not the least danger that But should 
we shall ever find a place in life where all the dis- strong will, 
agreeable is removed, and all phases of our work made 
smooth and interesting. The necessity will always be 
rising to call upon effort to take up the fight and hold 
us to duty where interest has failed. And it is just 
here that there must be no failure, else we shall be 
mere creatures of circumstance, drifting with every 
eddy in the tide of our life, and never able to 
breast the current. Interest is not to supplant the 
necessity for stern and strenuous endeavor, but rather 
to call forth the largest measure of endeavor of which 
the self is capable. It is to put at work a larger 
amount of power than can be secured in any other 
way ; in place of supplanting the will, it is to give it 
its point of departure and render its service all the 
more effective. 

Finally, we are not to forget that bad interests have interest 
the same propulsive power as good ones, and will lead acter.^^^" 
to acts just as surely. And these acts will just as read- 
ily be formed into habits. It is worth noticing that 
hack of the act lies an interest; in the act lies the seed 
of a hahit; ahead of the act lies behavior, which grows 
into conduct, this into character, and character into 
destiny. Bad interests should be shunned and dis- 
couraged. But even that is not enough. Good inter- 
ests must be installed in the place of the bad ones from 
which we wish to escape, for it is through substitution 
rather than suppression that we are able to break from 
the bad and adhere to the good. 

Our interests are an evolution. Out of the simple 
interests of the child grow the more complex interests 



208 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



of the man. Lacking the opportunity to develop the 
interests of childhood, the man will come somewhat 
short of the full interests of manhood. The great 
thing, then, in educating a child is to discover the 
fundamental interests which come to him from the 
race and, using these as a starting point, direct them 
into constantly broadening and more serviceable ones. 
Out of the early interest in play is to come the later 
interest in work ; out of the early interest in collecting 
treasure boxes full of worthless trinkets and old scraps 
comes the later interest in earning and retaining own- 
ership of property; out of the interest in chums and 
playmates comes the larger social interests ; out of in- 
terest in nature comes the interest of the naturalist. 
And so one by one we may examine the interests which 
bear the largest fruit in our adult life, and we find 
that they all have their roots in some early interest 
of childhood, which was encouraged and given a 
chance to grow. 

The order in which our interests develop thus be- 
comes an important question in our education. Nor 
is the order an arbitrary one, as might appear on first 
thought; for interest follows the invariable law of 
attaching to the activity for which the organism is at 
that time ready, and which it then needs in its further 
growth. That we are sometimes interested in harmful 
things does not disprove this assertion. The interest 
in its fundamental aspect is good, and but needs more 
healthful environment or more wise direction. While 
space forbids a full discussion of the genetic phase of 
interest here, yet we may profit by a brief statement 
of the fundamental interests of certain well-marked 
periods in our development. 

The interests of early childhood are chiefly con- 



INTEREST 209 

nected with ministering to the wants of the organism Thein- 

T . ,1 .-, t • • , , terests of 

as expressed m the appetites, and m securing control early chiid- 
of the larger muscles. Activity is the preeminent ^°°^- 
thing — racing and romping are worth doing for their 
own sake alone. Imitation is strong, curiosity is 
rising, and imagination is building a new world. 
Speech is a joy, language is learned with ease, and 
rhyme and rhythm become second nature. The inter- 
ests of this stage are still very direct and immediate. A 
distant end does not attract. The thing must be worth 
doing for the sake of the doing. Since the child's 
life at this age is so full of action, and since it is out 
of acts that habits grow, it is doubly desirous during 
this period that environment, models, and teaching 
should all direct his interests and activities into lines 
which will lead to permanent values. 

In the period from second dentition to puberty there The in- 
is a great widening in the scope of interests, as well later chUd- 
as a noticeable change in their character. Activity is ^°°^- 
still the keynote ; but the child is no longer interested 
merely in the doing, but is now able to look forward 
to the end sought. Interests which are somewhat in- 
direct now appeal to him, and the Jiow of things 
attracts his attention. He is beginning to reach out- 
side of his own little circle, and is ready for handi- 
craft, reading, history, and science. Spelling, writing, 
and arithmetic interest him partly from the activities 
involved, but more as a means to an end. The interest 
in complex games and plays increases, but the child 
is not yet ready for games which require team work. 
He has not come to the point where he is willing to 
sacrifice himself for the good of all. Interest in moral 
questions is beginning, and right and wrong are no 
longer things which may or may not be done without 



210 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

rebuke or punishment. The great problem at this stage 
is to direct the interest into ways of adapting the means 
to the end, and into willingness to work under volun- 
tary attention for the accomplishment of the desired 
end. 
The inter- Finally, with the advent of puberty, comes the last 
fescence^. °" stage in the development of interest before adult life. 
This period is not marked by the birth of new inter- 
ests so much as by a deepening and broadening of 
those already begun. The end becomes an increasingly 
larger factor, whether in play or in work. The activ- 
ity itself no longer satisfies. The youth can now play 
team games ; for his social interests are taking shape, 
and he can subordinate himself for the good of the 
group. Interest in the opposite sex takes on a new 
phase, and social form and mode of dress receive atten- 
tion. A new consciousness of self emerges, and the 
youth becomes introspective. Qi;iestions of the ulti- 
mate meaning of things press for solution, and What 
and who am I? demands an answer. At this age we 
pass from a regime of obedience to one of self-control, 
from an ethics of authority to one of individualism. 
All the interests are now taking on a more definite 
and stable form, and are looking seriously toward life 
vocations. This is a time of big plans and strenuous 
activity. It is a crucial period in our life, fraught 
with pitfalls and dangers, with privileges and oppor- 
tunities. At this strategic point in our life's voyage 
we may anchor ourselves with right interests to a safe 
manhood and a successful career; or we may, with 
wrong interests, bind ourselves to a broken life of dis- 
couragement and defeat. 



INTEREST 211 



EXERCISES 



Try making a list of ten of your most important interests 
in the order of their strength. 

Suppose you had made such a list five years ago, where 
would it have differed from the present list? 

Are you ever obliged to perform any activities in which you 
have no interest, either directly or indirectly? 

Can you name any activities in which you once had a strong 
interest but which you now perform chiefly from force of 
habit and without much interest? 

Are you more interested in play than in work? If so, 
why? 

Have you any interests of which you are somewhat 
ashamed ? On the other hand, do you lack certain interests 
which you feel that you should possess? 

What interests are you now trying especially to cultivate? 
to suppress? 

Have you as broad a field of interests as you can well take 
care of? 

Have you so many interests that you are slighting the 
development of some of the more important ones? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

James, " Talks to Teachers," Chapter X. 

DeGarmo, " Interest and Education," Chapters I-III. 

King, " Psychology of Child Development," Chapters 
XII-XIV. 

Angell, " Psychology," Chapter XXI. 

Dewey, " Interest as Related to Will," Herbart Year Book 
for 1895, Second Supplement. 



15 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE EMOTIONS 



The rela- 
tion of 
instinct 
and 
emotion. 



Definition : 
Feeling and 
emotion. 



Instincts and emotions are inextricably bound to- 
gether. Every instinctive act has its feeling side, and 
every emotion has its instinctive type of expression. 
Some stimulus comes to us from the external world, 
and instinctively we respond in a characteristic way; 
accompanying these physical responses is a character- 
istic feeling, which is the emotion. Thus the one object 
in our environment may provoke both the instinctive 
act and the emotion, since these are but the two sides 
of the one situation. For example, when we are sit- 
ting quietly in our room there comes unexpectedly a 
terrific crash of thunder. Instinctively we start, the 
heart stops, the breathing is interrupted, the face 
blanches, and we are all in a tremble: these are the 
characteristic physical responses to this particular 
stimulus. At the same time a feeling of fear surges 
over us : this is the characteristic emotional accompani- 
ment of the starting, the interrupted heart beat, the 
decreased arterial pressure, and the trembling. If 
these physical responses do not occur on liearing the 
thunder crash, the emotion of fear is absent ; if the emo- 
tion of fear is lacking, it is evidence that these expres- 
sions have not occurred. 

We may look upon emotion, then, as a feeling state 
of a high degree of intensity accompanying a complex 
physical response to some stimulus. The distinction 

212 



THE EMOTIONS 213 

between emotion and feeling is a purely arbitrary one, 
since the difference is only one of complexity and de- 
gree, and many feelings may rise to the intensity of 
emotions. A feeling of sadness on hearing of a num- 
ber of fatalities in a railway accident may suddenly 
become an emotion of grief if we learn that a member 
of our family is among those killed. A feeling of 
gladness may develop into an emotion of joy, or a 
feeling of resentment be kindled into an emotion of 
rage. 

The order of the entire event resulting in an emotion Emotion 
is, ( 1 ) some object of consciousness, coming either from physical 
immediate perception or through memory or imagina- response, 
tion, of such a nature that (2) characteristic physical 
responses are set up, deep-seated enough to affect 
the entire organism; and (3) the feeling state which 
accompanies these physical changes and which we 
call the emotion. It is readily observed that nothing 
new to us has been introduced in this description. 
We have already seen that all consciousness is motor, 
which is but another way of saying that every sen- 
sory current of the cortex must find an outlet through 
motor channels. Sometimes the motor discharge is of 
such a nature that we can easily discover its direction, 
as when the subject frowns, strikes a blow, or runs. 
At other times responses such as these may not take 
place, and the motor discharge may register itself 
chiefly in changes in the breathing, the heart beat, the 
secretions, or the arterial pressure. We have also seen 
that some feeling state accompanies all activities of 
the self. The problem which remains, then, is to dis- 
cover why certain particular physical expressions fol- 
low the thunder crash, and why the particular feeling 
quality which we call fear accompanies these expres- 



214 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Origin 
of emotion- 
al expres- 
sions. 



Physio- 
logical ex- 
planation 
of emotion. 



sions ; why certain particular physical expressions fol- 
low a personal insult, and why the particular feeling 
which we call anger goes along with these expressions. 

In order to solve this problem we shall have first 
to go beyond the individual and appeal to the history 
of the race. What the race has found serviceable, the 
individual repeats. But even then it is hard to see 
why the particular type of physical response such as 
shrinking, pallor, and trembling, which naturally fol- 
low stimuli threatening harm, should be the best. It 
is easy to see, however, that the feeling which prompts 
to flight or serves to deter from harm's way might 
be useful. It is plain that there is an advantage in 
the tense muscle, the set teeth, the held breath, and 
the quickened pulse which accompany the emotion of 
anger, and also in the feeling of anger itself, which 
prompts to the conflict. But even if we are not able 
in every case to determine at this day why all the in- 
stinctive responses and their correlate of feeling were 
the best for the life of the race, we may be sure that 
such was the case; for Nature is inexorable in her 
dictates that only that shall persist which is service- 
able in the largest number of cases. 

An interesting question arises at this point as to 
why we feel emotion accompanying some of our motor 
responses, and not others. Perceptions are crowding 
in upon us hour after hour; memory, thought, and 
imagination are in constant play; and a continuous 
motor discharge results each moment in physical ex- 
pressions great or small. Yet, in spite of these facts, 
feeling which is strong enough to rise to an emotion 
is only an occasional thing. If emotion accompanies 
any form of physical expression, why not all? Let 
us see whether we can discover any reason. One day 



THE EMOTIONS 215 

I saw a boy leading a dog along the street. All at 
once the dog slipped the string from over his head 
and ran away. The boy stood looking after the dog 
for a moment, and then burst into a fit of rage. What 
all had happened ? The moment before the dog broke 
away everything was running smoothly in the experi- 
ence of the boy. There was no obstruction to his 
thought or his plans. Then in an instant the situa- 
tion changes. The smooth flow of experience is 
checked and baffled. The discharge of nerve currents 
which meant thought, plans, action, is blocked. A 
crisis has arisen which requires readjustment. The 
nerve currents must flow in new directions, giving 
new thought, new plans, new activities^the dog must 
be recaptured. It is in connection with this damming 
up of nerve currents from following their wonted 
channels that the emotion emerges. Or, putting it 
into mental terms, the emotion occurs when the ordi- 
nary current of our thought is violently disturbed — 
when we meet with some crisis which necessitates a 
readjustment of our thought relations and plans, 
either temporarily or permanently. 

If the required readjustment is but temporary. The dura- 
then the emotion is short-lived, while if the readjust- emotion, 
ment is necessarily of longer duration, the emotion 
also will live longer. The fear which follows the 
thunder is relatively brief; for the shock is gone in 
a moment, and our thought is but temporarily dis- 
turbed. If the impending danger is one that persists, 
however, as of some secret assassin threatening our 
life, the fear also will persist. The grief of a child 
over the loss of some one dear to him is comparatively 
short, because the current of the child's life has not 
been so closely bound up in a complexity of experi- 



216 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Emotions 
occur in 
connection 
with crises 
in ex- 
perience. 



The con- 
trol of 
emotions. 



ences with the lost object as in the case of an older 
person, and hence the readjustment is easier. The 
grief of an adult over the loss of a very dear friend 
lasts long, for the object grieved over has so become 
a part of the bereaved one's experience that the loss 
requires a very complete readjustment of the whole 
life. In either case, however, as this readjustment is 
accomplished the emotion gradually fades away. 

If our description of the feelings has been correct, 
it will be seen that the simpler and milder feelings 
are for the common run of our everyday experience; 
they are the common valuer of our thoughts and acts 
from hour to hour. The emotions, or more intense 
feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide 
of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. We 
are angry on some particular provocation, we fear 
some extraordinary factor in our environment, we are 
joyful over some unusual good fortune. 

Since all emotions rest upon some form of physical 
expression primarily, and upon some thought back of 
this secondarily, it follows that the first step in con- 
trolling an emotion is to secure the removal of the 
state of consciousness which serves as its basis. This 
may be done, for instance, with a child either by ban- 
ishing the terrifying dog from his presence, or by 
convincing him that the dog is harmless. The motor 
response will then cease, and the emotion pass away. 
If the thought is persistent, however, through the 
persistence of its stimulus, then what remains is to 
seek to control the physical expression, and in that 
way suppress the emotion. If, instead of the knit 
brow, the tense muscles, the quickened heart beat, and 
all the deeper organic changes which go along with 
these, we can keep a smile on the face, the muscles re- 



THE EMOTIONS 



217 



Depend- 
ence on 
expres- 
sion. 



laxed, the heart-beat steady, and a normal condition 
in all the other organs, we shall have no cause to fear 
an explosion of anger. If we are afraid of mice and 
feel an almost irresistible tendency to mount a chair 
every time we see a mouse, we can do wonders in sup- 
pressing the fear by resolutely refusing to give ex- 
pression to these tendencies. Inhibition of the expres- 
sion inevitably means the death of the emotion. 

This fact has its bad side as well as its good in the 
feeling life, for it means that good emotions as well 
as bad will fade out if we fail to allow them expres- 
sion. We are all perfectly familiar with the fact in 
our own experience that an interest which does not 
find means of expression soon passes away. Sympa- 
thy unexpressed ere long passes over into indifference. 
Even love cannot live without expression. Keligious 
emotion which does not go out in deeds of service can- 
not persist. The natural end and aim of our emo- 
tions is to serve as motives to activity; and missing 
this opportunity, they have not only failed in their 
office, but will themselves die of inaction. 

But, while emotion may be inhibited by suppress- Relief 
ing the physical expressions on which it is founded, expression, 
so may a state of emotional tension be relieved by 
some forms of expression. None have failed to ex- 
perience the relief which comes to the overcharged 
nervous system from a good cry. There is no sorrow 
so bitter as a dry sorrow, when one cannot weep. A 
state of anger or annoyance is relieved by an explo- 
sion of some kind, either in a blow or its equivalent 
in speech. We often feel better when we have told 
a man " what we think of him.'' 

At first glance this all seems opposed to what we 
have been laying down as the explanation of emo- 



218 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



tion. Yet it is not so if we look well into the case. 
We have already seen that emotion occurs when there 
is a blocking of the usual pathways of discharge for 
the nerve currents, which must then seek new out- 
lets, and thus result in the setting up of new motor 
responses. In the case of grief, for example, there is 
a disturbance in the whole organism ; the heart beat is 
deranged, the blood pressure diminished, and the 
nerve tone lowered. What is needed is for the cur- 
rents which are finding an outlet in directions result- 
ing in these particular responses to find a pathway 
of discharge which will not produce such deep-seated 
results. This may be found in crying. The energy 
thus expended is diverted from producing internal 
disturbances. Likewise, the explosion in anger may 
serve to restore the equilibrium of disturbed nerve 
currents. 

All this is true, however, only when the expression 
does not serve to keep the idea before the mind which 
was originally responsible for the emotion. A person 
may work himself into a passion of anger by begin- 
ning to talk about an insult and, as he grows increas- 
ingly violent, bringing the situation more and more 
sharply into his consciousness. The eifect of terrify- 
ing images is easily to be observed in the case of one 's 
starting to run when he is afraid after night. There 
is probably no doubt that the running would relieve 
his fear providing he could do it and not picture the 
threatening something as pursuing him. But, with 
his imagination conjuring up dire images of frightful 
catastrophes at every step, all control is lost and fresh 
waves of terror surge over the shrinking soul. 

Among civilized peoples there is a constantly grow- 
ing tendency toward emotional control. Primitive 



THE EMOTIONS 



219 



races express grief, joy, fear, or anger much more 
freely than do civilized races. This does not mean, 
that primitive man feels more deeply than civilized 
man; for, as we have already seen, the crying, laugh- 
ing, or blustering is but a small part of the whole 
physical expression, and one's entire organism may 
be stirred to its depths without any of these outward 
manifestations. Man has found it advisable as he 
advanced in civilization not to reveal all he feels to 
those around him. The face, which is the most ex- 
pressive part of the body, has come to be under such 
perfect control that it is hard to read through it the 
emotional state, although the face of civilized man is 
capable of expressing far more than is that of the 
savage. The same difference is observable between 
the child and the adult. The child reveals each pass- 
ing shade of emotion through his expression, while the 
adult may feel much that he does not show. 

The problem for each individual in this connection 
is to secure a proper balance between emotional ex- 
pression and control. Nothing affects the type of 
one's personality more than the quality of his emo- 
tional life. No one likes the hard and cold person 
who lives in the realm of intellect alone, or who, feel- 
ing deeply in his own soul, seeks to hide all his emo- 
tion under a passive exterior. The atmosphere about 
such a one lacks the human quality — he is too frigid. 
On the other hand, we like no better the person who 
is too ready to reveal his emotions. Tears too freely 
shed suffer in quality and no longer command our 
sympathy. We feel that an emotion which is ever 
ready to bubble over must lie near the surface, else 
it would Qot so readily appear. Thus may any emo- 
tion be cheapened by overexpression. 



Growing 

tendency 

toward 

emotional 

control. 



220 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The 

emotions 
and en- 
joyment. 



There is no other mental factor which has more to 
do with the enjoyment we get out of life than our 
feelings and emotions. Few of us would care to live 
at all, if all feeling were eliminated from human 
experience. True, feeling often makes us suffer; but 
in so far as life's joys triumph over its woes, our 
feelings minister to our enjoyment. Without sym- 
pathy, love, and appreciation, life would be barren 
indeed. Moreover, it is only through our own emo- 
tional experience that we are able to interpret the 
feeling side of the lives about us. Failing in this, we 
miss one of the most significant phases of social ex- 
perience, and are left with our own sympathies un- 
developed and our life by so much impoverished. 

The interpretation of the subtler emotions of those 
about us is in no small degree an art. The human 
face and form present a constantly changing pano- 
rama of the soul 's feeling states to those who can read 
their signs. The ability to read the finer feelings, 
which reveal themselves in expressions too delicate to 
be read by the eye of the gross or unsympathetic ob- 
server, lies at the basis of all fine interpretation of 
personality. Feelings are often too deep for outward 
expression, and we are slow to reveal our deepest 
selves to those who cannot appreciate and understand 
them. 

The emotions are to be cultivated as the intellect 
or the muscles are to be cultivated; namely, through 
proper exercise. Our thought is to dwell on those 
things to which proper emotions attach, and to shun 
lines which would suggest emotions of an undesirable 
type. Emotions which are to be developed must, as 
has already been said, find expression; we must act 
in response to their leadings, else they become but 



THE EMOTIONS 221 

idle vaporings. If love prompts us to say a kind word 
to a suffering fellow mortal, the word must be spoken 
or the feeling itself fades away. On the other hand, 
the emotions which we wish to suppress are to be 
refused expression. The unkind and cutting word is 
to be left unsaid when we are angry, and the fear of 
things which are harmless left unexpressed and there- 
by doomed to die. 

Much material for the cultivation of our emotions Theemo- 
lies in the everyday life all about us if we can but tor in our 
interpret it. Few indeed of those whom we meet mwit°^" 
daily but are hungering for appreciation and sym- 
pathy. Lovable traits exist in every character, and 
will reveal themselves to the one who looks for them. 
Miscarriages of justice abound on all sides and de- 
mand our indignation and wrath, and the effort to 
right the wrong. Evil always exists to be hated and 
suppressed, and dangers to be feared and avoided. 
Human life and the movement of human affairs con- 
stantly appeal to the feeling side of our nature if 
we understand at all what life and action mean. A 
certain blindness exists in many people, however, 
which makes our own little joys, or sorrows, or fears 
the most remarkable ones in the world, and keeps us 
from realizing that others may feel as deeply as we. 
Of course this self-centered attitude of mind is fatal 
to any true cultivation of the emotions. It leads to 
an emotional life which lacks not only breadth and 
depth, but also perspective. 

v^In order to increase our facility in this interpreta- Literature 
tion of the emotions by teaching us what to look for cultivation 
in life and experience, we may go to literature. Here g^^^^^o^g 
we find life interpreted for us in the ideal by masters 
of interpretation ; and, looking through their eyes, we 



222 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Harm in 
emotional 
overex- 
citement. 



see new depths and breadths of feeling which we had 
never before discovered. Indeed, literature deals far 
more in the aggregate with the feeling side than with 
any other aspect of human life. And it is just this 
which makes literature a universal language, for the 
language of our emotions is more easily interpreted 
than that of our reason. The smile, the cry, the laugh, 
the frown, the caress are understood all around the 
world among all peoples. They are universal. 

There is always this danger to be avoided, however. 
We may become so taken up with the overwrought de- 
scriptions of the emotions as found in literature or on 
the stage that the common humdrum of everyday life 
around us seems flat and stale. The interpretation 
of the writer or the actor is far beyond what we are 
able to make for ourselves, so we take their interpre- 
tation rather than trouble ourselves to look in our 
own environment for the material which might ap- 
peal to our emotions. It is not rare to find those who 
easily weep over the woes of an imaginary person in 
a book or on the stage unable to feel sympathy for 
the real suffering which may exist all around them. 
The story is told of a lady at the theater who wept 
over the suffering of the hero in the play; and at 
the moment she was shedding the unnecessary tears, 
her own coachman, whom she had compelled to wait 
for her in the street, was frozen to death. Our seem- 
ingly prosaic environment is full of suggestions to the 
emotional life, and books and plays should only help 
to develop in us the power rightly to respond to these 
suggestions. 

Danger may exist also in still another line ; namely, 
that of emotional overexcitement. There is a great 
nervous strain in high emotional tension. Nothing 



THE EMOTIONS 223 

is more exhausting than a severe fit of anger ; it leaves 
its victim weak and limp. A severe case of fright 
often incapacitates one for mental or physical labor 
for hours, or it may even result in permanent injury. 
The whole nervous tone is distinctly lowered by sor- 
row, and even excessive joy may be harmful. 

In our actual, everyday life, there is little danger 
from emotional overexcitement unless it be in the case 
of fear in children, as was shown in the discussion on 
instincts, and in that of grief over the loss of objects 
that are dear to us. Most of our childish fears we 
could just as well avoid if our elders were wiser in 
the matter of guarding us against those that are un- 
necessary. The griefs we cannot hope to escape, al- 
though we can do much to control them. Long-con- 
tinued emotional excitement, unless it is followed by 
corresponding activity, gives us those who weep over 
the wrongs of humanity, but never do anything to 
right them; who are sorry to the point of death over 
human suffering, but cannot be induced to lend their 
aid to its alleviation. We could very well spare a 
thousand of those in the world who merely feel, for 
one who acts. 

We should watch, then, that our good feelings do 
not simply evaporate as feelings, but that they find 
some place to apply themselves to accomplish good; 
that we do not, like Hamlet, rave over wrongs which 
need to be righted, but never bring ourselves to the 
point where we take a hand in their righting. \ If our 
emotional life is to be rich and deep in its feeling 
and effective in its results on our acts and character, 
it must find its outlet in deeds. 

Emotions are among our strongest motives to action. 
Love has often done in the reformation of a fallen life 



224 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



what strength of will was not able to accomplish; it 
has caused dynasties to fall, and has changed the map 
of nations. Hatred is a motive hardly less strong. 
Fear will make savage beasts out of men who fall 
under its sway, causing them to trample helpless 
women and children under feet, whom in their saner 
moments they would protect with their lives. Anger 
puts out all the light of reason, and prompts peaceful 
and well-meaning men to commit murderous acts. 
Thus feeling, from the faintest and simplest feeling 
of interest, the ranges of pleasures and pain, the 
sentiments which underlie all our lives, on to the 
mighty emotions which grip our lives with an over- 
powering strength — ^these constitute a large part of 
the motive power which is constantly urging us on 
to do and dare. Hence it is important from this stand- 
point, also, that we should have the right type of feel- 
ings and emotions well developed, and the undesirable 
ones eliminated as far as possible. 

Emotion and feeling are partly habit. That is, we 
can form emotional as well as other habits, and they 
are as hard to break. Anger allowed to run uncon- 
trolled leads into habits of angry outbursts, while the 
one who habitually controls his temper finds it sub- 
mitting to the habit of remaining within bounds. One 
may cultivate the habit of showing his fear on all 
occasions, or of discouraging its expression. He may 
form the habit of jealousy or of confidence. It is pos- 
sible even to form the habit of falling in love, or of 
so suppressing the tender emotions that love finds little 
opportunity for expression. And here, as elsewhere, 
habits are formed through performing the acts upon 
which the habit rests. If there are emotional habits 
we are desirous of forming, what we have to do is to 



THE EMOTIONS 225 

indulge the emotional expression of the type we desire, 
and the habit will follow. If we wish to form the 
habit of living in a chronic state of the blues, then 
all we have to do is to be blue and act blue sufficiently, 
and this form of emotional expression will become a 
part of us. If we desire to form the habit of living in 
a happy, cheerful state, we can accomplish this by 
encouraging the corresponding expressions. 

EXERCISES 

What are the characteristic bodily expressions which 
accompany a feeling of anger? of fear? of hatred? of love? 

Which of these forms of expression may be easily detected 
by an observer? Are those which cannot be detected any 
less real than the grosser forms of expressions? 

What is the philosophy in " counting ten " before you strike 
when you are angry? 

Are you naturally emotional? To what emotions are you 
the most subject? 

Are you inclined to any form of emotional expression which 
you are trying to suppress? Do you lack in some form of 
emotional expression which you should cultivate? 

Are you naturally responsive to the emotional tone of 
others; that is, are you sympathetic? 

Are you easily affected by reading emotional books? 

What are you doing to enrich your emotional life? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XXIV. 
James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter XXV. 
Ribot, " Psychology of the Emotions," Chapters VII-IX. 
Angell, " Psychology," Chapters XVIII and XIX. 
Royce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chapter XIV. 



CHAPTER XV 



THE WILL 



The fundamental fact in all life is movement, ac- 
tivity. Starting with the lower forms of animals and 
passing up through the higher, we find a constantly 
growing range of movements and activities progress- 
ing side by side with an increasing complexity of men- 
tal life. This correspondence is not mere accident. 
A wide and varied range of activities is possible only 
when directed by a complex consciousness, and a 
highly developed consciousness never accompanies a 
narrow and simple range of activities. The tiny ani- 
mal drifting hither and thither in the tide lives a 
very simple and stupid mental life, not just because 
he was created thus, but because he has no need of a 
higher complex consciousness when he has no activities 
to perform which require direction. Indeed, a highly 
developed mind would not only be unnecessary for 
such an animal, but would be a positive detriment; 
for a complex consciousness has no significance except 
as it renders possible a greater sphere of activity. 
Man has a complex and highly developed mind be- 
cause he has need of it to adjust himself to the great 
complexity of activities which he must perform. All 
consciousness is motor. Thought and feeling from 
their very nature result in action. They have devel- 
oped to their present stage in the human family, not 
merely along with growing activities, but because of 
them. 

226 



THE WILL 227 

Volition concerns itself wholly with acts. The will Wiii con- 
always has to do with causing or inhibiting some ac- w^Xadlpt- 
tion either physical or mental. Here its function ^veacts. 
begins and ends. Movements, like other phenomena, 
do not just happen. They never occur without a cause 
back of them. Whether they are performed with a 
conscious end in view or without it, the fact remains 
the same — something must lie back of the act to 
account for its performance. During the last hour, 
each of us has performed many simple movements 
and more or less complex acts. These acts have varied 
greatly in character. Of many we were wholly un- 
conscious. Others were consciously performed, but 
practically without effort on our part. Still others 
were accomplished only after a struggle to decide 
which of two lines of action we should take. What 
is it that lies back of each of these classes of acts? 
Is the cause the same in all cases, or does it vary as 
the type of action varies? In order to answer these 
questions let us look a little more closely into the char- 
acter of the most important types of action. 

First, there are going on within every living organ- Simple 
ism countless movements of which he is in large part acts, 
unconscious, which he does nothing to initiate, and 
which he is largely powerless to prevent. Some of 
them are wholly, and others almost, out of the reach 
and power of his will. Such are the movements of 
the heart and vascular system, the action of the lungs 
in breathing, the movements of the digestive tract, the 
work of the various glands in their process of secre- 
tion. We may even go to the very cells themselves 
and find that here also ceaseless activity is the rule 
wherever the pre cess of metabolism is going on. The 
entire organism is not only a mass of living matter, 
IG 



acts 



228 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

but just because it is living no part of it is at rest. 
Movements of this type require no external stimulus 
and no direction. They take care of themselves, as 
long as the body is in health, without let or hindrance, 
continuing whether we sleep or wake, whether we are 
in hypnotic trance or in anaesthetic coma. With move- 
ments of this type we shall have no more concern, 
since they are almost wholly physiological, and come 
scarcely at all within the range of the consciousness. 
Instinctive Next, there are a large number of such acts as clos- 
ing the eyes when they are threatened, starting back 
from danger, crying out from pain or alarm, frown- 
ing and striking when angry. These may roughly be 
classed as instinctive, and have already been discussed 
under that head. They differ from the former class 
in that they require some stimulus to set the act off. 
We are fully conscious of their performance, although 
they are performed without a conscious end in view. 
Winking the eye serves an important purpose, but 
that is not why we wink; starting back from danger 
is a wise thing to do, but we do not stop to consider 
this before performing the act. And so on with a 
multitude of reflex and instinctive acts. They are per- 
formed immediately upon receiving an appropriate 
stimulus, because we possess an organism calculated to 
act in a definite way in response to certain stimuli. 
There is no need for, and indeed no place for, any- 
thing to come in between the stimulus and the act. 
The stimulus pulls the trigger of a ready-set nervous 
system, and the act follows at once. Acts of these 
reflex and instinctive types do not come properly 
within the range of volition, hence we will not con- 
sider them further. 

Finally, growing out of these reflex and instinctive 



THE WILL 229 

acts is a broad field of action which is called voli- Volitional 
tional. The distinguishing feature of this type of ceded'by 
action is that the acts are performed with a definite. tk)na?^^' 
end in view. This end is something which we desire 
and which we purpose to attain through the proposed 
act. In order to attain a desired end it is evident that 
we must be able to purpose an act suitable for the 
accomplishment of that end. But it is impossible to 
purpose an act, the copy or image of which is not in 
the memory; for there would be nothing present to 
purpose. Now it happens that all random, reflex, and 
instinctive acts once or many times involuntarily per- 
formed leave their image in the mind; and these 
images serve as ends which we can deliberately will 
to attain. From this it follows that the scope of our 
possible voluntary acts depends on the supply of im- 
ages left by experiences of acts first voluntarily 
performed. 

Many of our acts follow immediately the appear- ideomotor 

Action 

ance of the image in consciousness, without hesitation 
and without delay. This kind of action we name 
ideomotor. The pencil and paper are lying before 
us, and we find ourselves scribbling; these familiar 
articles have suggested the image of writing, and the 
act has supervened almost without our consciousness 
of it. A door starts to blow shut, and we spring up 
and avert the slam; the image of the act necessary 
to prevent the accident has entered the mind and 
been acted upon at once. The memory of a neglected 
errand comes to us, and we have started on its per- 
formance before we are aware ; the act has followed 
immediately on the heels of the image. The move- 
ments of the piano player's fingers follow unerringly 
and with almost incredible speed his perception of 



230 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The image 
and the 
act. 



Motor 
power of 
an image. 



the symbols on the printed page; each separate per- 
cept has remained but the fraction of a second in 
consciousness, but yet long enough for the movement 
to follow. A crowd watching a football game may 
be observed to lean forward with tense muscles in the 
direction their favorite team is advancing. The ges- 
ticulations of a forcible speaker are often performed 
in miniature by interested listeners. The thought of 
climbing the stairs is followed by a feeling of inner- 
vation in the muscles of the legs. The lips have a 
tendency to pronounce the words as we read silently 
from a printed page. And so we might go on and 
give a thousand similar illustrations. 

We may then lay it down as a rule that every 
image of a movement tends to result in the actual 
movement, and will so result unless checked hy an 
antagonistic image. In the run of our everyday ex- 
perience there is a constant interplay of images, some 
leading toward motor responses, and others restraining 
from them. The child sees the lamp and starts to reach 
for it, when the memory of yesterday's burn from a 
like act comes in and interferes; the inhibiting image 
is strong enough in this case to prevent the act. An 
aching tooth suggests that we go to the dentist and 
have it extracted, but the thought of the pain occurs 
to us and we delay the ordeal. Finally, the pain may 
become so severe that the immediate torture overbal- 
ances the thought of the more distant suffering, and 
we find ourselves on the way to the dentist. 

A waking man's behavior is at all times *' the re- 
sultant of two opposing neural forces. With unim- 
aginable fineness some currents among the cells and 
fibers of his brain are playing on the motor nerves, 
while other currents, as unimaginably fine, are play- 



THE WILL 231 

ing on the first currents, damming or helping them, 
altering their direction or their speed." No matter 
how long or how severe may be the struggle between 
the conflicting images, however, the act comes in the 
end as a result of the image which has triumphed, and 
hence occupies the attention. And, further, when 
attention has once settled down on the proper image, 
the act is sure to follow. 

As long as these contending neural forces are bal- indecision 
anced against each other, as long as the images are o/'hnages. 
in conflict to win the attention, we are in a state of 
indecision. This happens whenever the mind is occu- 
pied by a number of antagonistic images. Everyone 
knows for himself this state of inward unrest. An 
image enters the mind which would of itself prompt 
an act ; but before the act can occur, a contrary image 
appears and the act is checked; another image comes 
favoring the act, and is in turn counterbalanced by 
an opposing one. The impelling and inhibiting im- 
ages we call motives or reasons for and against the 
proposed act. While we are balancing the motives 
against each other, we are said to deliberate. This 
process of deliberation must go on, if we continue to 
think about the matter at all, until one set of images 
has triumphed over the other and secured the atten- 
tion. When this has occurred, we have decided, and 
the deliberation is at an end. We have exercised the 
highest function of the will and made a choice. 

Sometimes the battle of motives is short, the de- Decision 
cision being reached as soon as there is time to sum- mediate™' 
mon all the reasons on both sides of the question. At ^^^^^yed. 
other times the conflict may go on for days or weeks, 
neither set of motives being strong enough to van- 
quish the other and dictate the decision, When the 



232 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



The emo- 
tional factor 
in decision. 



Types of 
decision. 



The reason- 
able type. 



motives are somewhat evenly balanced we wisely pause 
in making a decision, because when one line of action 
is taken, the other cannot be, and we hesitate to lose 
either opportunity. A state of indecision is usually 
highly unpleasant, and no doubt more than one de- 
cision has been hastened in our lives simply that we 
might be done with the unpleasantness attendant on 
the consideration of two contrary and insistent sets 
of motives. 

It is of the highest importance when making a de- 
cision of any consequence that we should be fair in 
considering all the reasons on both sides of the ques- 
tion, allowing each its just weight. Nor is this as easy 
as it might appear ; for, as we saw in our study of the 
emotions, our feeling attitude toward any object that 
occupies the mind is largely responsible for the sub- 
jective value we place upon it. It is easy to be so 
prejudiced toward or against a line of action that the 
motives bearing upon it cannot get fair consideration. 
To be able to eliminate this personal factor to such 
an extent that the evidence before us on a question 
may be considered on its merits is a rare accomplish- 
ment. 

A decision may be reached in a variety of ways, 
the most important ones of which may now briefly 
be described after the general plan suggested by Pro- 
fessor James: 

(1) One of the simplest types of decision is that 
in which the preponderance of motives is clearly seen 
to be on one side or other, and the only rational thing 
to do is to decide in accordance with the weight of 
evidence. If we discover ten reasons why we should 
pursue a certain course of action, and only one or 
two reasons of equal weight why we should not, then 



THE WILL 



233 



the decision ought not to be hard to make. The points 
to watch in this case are (a) that we have really dis- 
covered all the important reasons on both sides of the 
case, and (6) that our feelings of personal interest 
or prejudice have not given some of the motives an 
undue weight in our scale of values. Decisions of this 
type are called reasonable. 

(2) It is to be doubted whether as many of our de- 
cisions are made under immediate stress of volition as 
we think. We may be hesitating between two sets of 
motives, unable to decide between .them, when a third 
factor enters which is not really related to the ques- 
tion at all, but which finally dictates the decision never- 
theless. For example, we are considering the question 
whether we shall go on an excursion or stay at home 
and complete a piece of work. The benefits coming 
from the recreation, and the pleasures of the trip are 
pitted against the expense which must be incurred 
and the desirability of having the work done on time. 
At this point, while as yet we have been unable to 
decide, a friend comes along, and we seek to evade 
the responsibility of making our own decision by ap- 
pealing to him, * ' You tell me what to do ! " How 
few of us have never said in effect if not in words, 
'' I will do this or that if you will "? How few 
have never taken advantage of a rainy day to stay 
from church or shirk an undesirable engagement? 
How few have not allowed important questions to be 
decided by some trivial or accidental factor not really 
related to the choice in the least? 

This form of decision is accidental decision. It does 
not rest on motives which are vitally related to the 
case, but rather on the accident of external circum- 
stances. The person who habitually makes his deci- 



Accidental 
type : ex- 
ternal 
motives. 



Drifting 
with cir- 
cum- 
stances. 



234 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Accidental 
type : sub- 
jective 
motives 



sions in this way lacks power of will. He does not 
hold himself to the question until he has the evidence 
before him, and then himself direct his attention to 
the best line of action and so secure its performance. 
He drifts with the tide, he goes with the crowd, he 
shirks responsibility. 

(3) A second type of accidental decision may occur 
when we are hesitating between two lines of action 
which are seemingly about equally desirable, and no 
preponderating motive enters the field; when no ex- 
ternal factor appears, and no advising friend comes 
to the rescue. Then, with the necessity for deciding 
thrust upon us, we tire of the worry and strain of de- 
liberation and say to ourselves, ' ' This thing must be 
settled one way or the other pretty soon; I am tired 
of the whole matter." When we have reached this 
point we are likely to shut our eyes to the evidence 
in the case, and decide largely upon the whim or mood 
of the moment. Very likely we regret our decision 
the next instant, but without any more cause for the 
regret than we had for the decision. It is evident that 
such a decision as this does not rest on valid motives, 
but rather on the accident of subjective conditions. 
Habitual decisions of this type are an evidence of a 
mental laziness or a mental incompetence which ren- 
ders the individual incapable of marshaling the facts 
bearing on a case. He cannot hold them before his 
mind and weigh them against each other until one side 
outweighs the other and dictates the decision. Of 
course the remedy for this weakness of decision lies 
in not allowing oneself to be pushed into a decision 
simply to escape the unpleasantness of a state of inde- 
cision, or the necessity of searching for further evi- 
dence which will make the decision easier. 



THE WILL 235 

On the other hand, it is possible to form a habit of Chronic 
indecision, of undue hesitancy in coming to conclu- ^^ ecision. 
sions when the evidence is all before us. This gives 
us the mental dawdler, the person who will spend 
several minutes in an agony of indecision over whether 
to carry an umbrella on this particular trip ; whether 
to wear black shoes or tan shoes to-day ; whether to go 
calling or to stay at home and write letters this after- 
noon. Such a person is usually in a stew over some 
inconsequential matter, and consumes so much time 
and energy in fussing over trivial things that he is 
incapable of handling larger ones. If we are certain 
that we have all the facts in a given case before us, 
and have given each its due weight so far as our judg- 
ment will enable us to do, then there is nothing to be 
gained by delaying the decision. Nor is there any 
occasion to change the decision after it has once been 
made unless new evidence is discovered bearing on 
the case. 

(4) The highest type of decision is that in which Decision 
the I is the determining factor. The pressure of ex- effor?. 
ternal circumstances and inward impulse is not enough 
to overcome a calm and determined I v^ill. Two 
possible lines of action may lie open before us. Every 
current of our being leads toward the one; in addi- 
tion, inclination, friends, honors all beckon in the same 
direction. From the other course our very nature 
shrinks ; duty alone bids us take this line, and promises This the 
no rewards except the approval of conscience. Here power, 
is the crucial point in human experience ; the supreme 
test of the individual ; the last measure of man 's inde- 
pendence and power. Winning at this point man has 
exercised his highest prerogative — that of independent 
choice ; failing here, he reverts toward the lower forms 



236 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Illustration 

from 

Hugo. 



Will acts 
through 
directing 
the atten- 
tion. 



and is a creature of circumstance, no longer the master 
of his own destiny, but blown about by the winds of 
chance. And it behooves us to win in this battle. We 
may lose in a contest or a game and yet not fail, be- 
cause we have done our best ; if we fail in the conflict 
of motives we have planted a seed of weakness from 
which we shall at last harvest defeat. 

Jean Val Jean, the galley slave of almost a score 
of years, escapes and lives an honest life. He wins 
the respect and admiration of friends; he is elected 
mayor of his town, and honors are heaped on him. At 
the height of his prosperity he reads one day that a 
man has been arrested in another town for the escaped 
convict Jean Val Jean, and is about to be sent to 
the galleys. Now comes the supreme test in Jean Val 
Jean's life. Shall he remain the honored, respected 
citizen and let an innocent man suffer in his stead, 
or shall he proclaim himself the long-sought criminal 
and again have the collar riveted on his neck and 
take his place at the oars 1 He spends one awful night 
of conflict, in which contending motives make a battle 
ground of his soul. But in the morning he has won. 
He has saved his manhood. His conscience yet lives— 
and he goes and gives himself up to the officers. Nor 
could he do otherwise and still remain a man. 

The ultimate test of the strength of the will is 
found in the power of attention ; upon this all choice 
finally rests. Given the ability to attend to one set 
of motives to the exclusion of all others, and the de- 
cision is already made. For decision finally consists 
in mentally agreeing to attend to the images suggest- 
ing the accepted line of action and shutting from the 
mind those opposed to it. Once the decision is made, 
the act which is to carry it out may either follow 



THE WILL 



237 



immediately or be delayed for a more appropriate 
opportunity. This does not matter. When the act 
comes, whether sooner or later, it is but the expres- 
sion of the images which occupied the attention in 
the decision. 

The actual amount of volition exercised in making 
a decision cannot be measured by objective results. 
The fact that A follows the pathway of duty, while B 
falters and finally drifts into the byways of pleasure, 
is not certain evidence that the former has put forth 
the greater power of will. In the first place, the 
allurements which led B astray may have had no 
charms for A. Furthermore, A may have so formed 
the habit of pursuing the pathway of duty when the 
two paths opened before him, that his well-trained 
feet unerringly led him into the narrow way with- 
out a struggle. Of course A is on safer ground than 
B, and on ground that we should all seek to attain. 
But, nevertheless, B, although he fell when he should 
have stood, may have been fighting a battle and mani- 
festing a power of resistance of which A, under simi- 
lar temptation, would have been incapable. The only 
point from which a conflict of motives can be safely 
judged is that of the soul which is engaged. in the 
battle. 

Several fairly well-marked volitional types may be 
discovered : (1) The impulsive type of will, which goes 
along with a nervous organism of the hair-trigger 
kind. The brain is in a state of highly unstable equi- 
librium, and a relatively slight current serves to set 
off the motor centers. Action follows before there is 
time for a counteracting current to intervene. Put- 
ting it in mental terms, we act on an idea which pre- 
sents itself before an opposing one has opportunity 



Objective 

tests not 
safe meas- 
ure of 
volition. 



Volitional 
types : 
1. The im- 
pulsive 
type. 



238 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

to enter the mind. Hence the action is largely or 
wholly ideomotor and hut slightly or not at all de- 
liberative. It is this type of will which results in the 
hasty word or deed, or the rash act committed on the 
impulse of the moment and repented of at leisure; 
which compels the frequent, '' I didn't think, or I 
would not have done it! " The impulsive person 
may undoubtedly have credited up to him many kind 
words and noble deeds. In addition, he usually car- 
ries with him an air of spontaneity and whole-heart- 
edness which go far to atone for his faults. The fact 
remains, however, that he is too little the master of 
his acts, that he is guided too largely by external cir- 
cumstances or inward caprice. He lacks balance. 
This not to Impulsive action is not to be confused with quick 
with quick decision and rapid action. Many of the world's 
greatest and safest leaders have been noted for quick- 
ness of decision and for rapidity of action in carrying 
out their decisions. It must be remembered, however, 
that these men were making decisions in fields well 
known to them. They were specialists in this line of 
deliberation. The motives for and against certain 
lines of action had often been dwelt upon. All pos- 
sible contingencies had been imaged many times over, 
and a valuation placed upon the different motives. 
The various images had long been associated with 
certain definite lines of action. Deliberation under 
such conditions can be carried on with lightning 
rapidity, each motive being checked off as worth so 
much the instant it presents itself, and action can 
follow immediately when attention settles on the 
proper motive to govern the decision. This is not im- 
pulse, but abbreviated deliberation. These facts sug- 
gest to us that we should think much and carefully 



decision. 



THE WILL 



239 



over matters in which we are required to make quick 
decisions. 

Of course the remedy for the overimpulsive type is The remedy 
to change ideomotor into deliberative action. When sive^eci-' 
the impulse comes to act without consideration, pause ^*°^- 
to give the other side of the question an opportunity 
to be heard. Check the motor response to images 
which suggest action until you have reviewed the 
field to see whether there are contrary images to be 
taken into account. Form the habit of waiting for all 
evidence before deciding. ^' Think twice " before 
you act. 

(2) The opposite of the impulsive type of will is 2. Theob- 
the obstructed or halky will. In this type there is will, 
too much inhibition, or else not enough impulsion. 
Images which should result in action are checkmated 
by opposing images, or do not possess vitality enough 
as motives to overcome the dead weight of inertia 
which clogs mental action. The person knows well 
enough what he should do, but he cannot get started. 
He ' ' cannot get the consent of his will. ' ' It may be 
the student whose mind is tormented by thoughts of 
coming failure in recitation or examination, but who 
yet cannot force himself to the exertion necessary 
safely to meet the ordeal. It may be the dissolute 
man who tortures himself in his sober moments with 
remorse and the thought that he was intended for bet- 
ter things, but who, waking from his meditations, 
goes on in the same old way. It may be the child 
undergoing punishment, who is to be released from 
bondage as soon as he will promise to be good, but 
who cannot bring himself to say the necessary words. 
It not only may be, but is, man or woman anywhere 
who has ideals which are known to be worthy and 



240 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

noble, but which fail to take hold. It is anyone who 
is following a course of action which he knows is be- 
neath him. 
Results No one can doubt that the moral tragedies, the 

type. ^^ failures and the shipwrecks in life come far more 
from the breaking of the bonds which should bind 
right ideals to action than from a failure to perceive 
the truth. Men differ far more in their deeds than 
in their standards of action. 
The remedy The remedy for this diseased type of will is much 
obstructed easier to prescribe than to apply. It is simply to 
^^^^' refuge to attend to the contrary images which are 

blocking action, and to cultivate and encourage those 
which lead to action of the right kind. It is seeking 
to vitalize our good impulses and render them effec- 
tive by acting on them whenever opportunity offers. 
Nothing can be accomplished by moodily dwelling on 
the disgrace of harboring the obstructing images. 
Thus brooding over them only encourages them. 
What we need is to get entirely away from the line 
of thought in which we have met our obstruction, and 
approach the matter from a different direction. The 
child who is in a fit of the sulks does not so much 
need a lecture on the disagreeable habit he is forming 
as to have his thought led into lines not connected 
with the grievance which is causing him the trouble. 
The stubborn child does not need to have his will 
*' broken," but rather to have it strengthened. He 
may be compelled to do what he does not want to do ; 
but if this is accomplished through physical force 
instead of by leading to thoughts connected with the 
performance of the act, it may be doubted whether 
the will has in any degree been strengthened. In- 
deed it may rather be depended upon that it has 



THE WILL 



241 



3. The 
normal 
will. 



been weakened; for an opportunity for self-control, 
through which alone the will develops, has been lost. 
The ultimate remedy for rebellion often lies in greater 
freedom at the proper time. This does not mean that 
the child should not obey rightful authority promptly 
and explicitly, but that just as little external au- 
thority as possible should intervene to take from the 
child the opportunity for se?/-compulsion. 

(3) The golden mean between these two abnormal 
types of will may be called the normal or balanced 
will. Here there is a proper ratio between impulsion 
and inhibition. Ideas are not acted upon the instant 
they enter the mind without giving time for a survey 
of the field of motives, neither is action " sicklied 
o'er with the pale cast of thought " to such an ex- 
tent that it becomes impossible. The evidence is all 
considered and each motive fully weighed. But this 
once done, decision follows. No dilatory and obstruct- 
ive tactics are allowed. The fleeting impulse is not 
enough to persuade to action, neither is action unduly 
delayed after the decision is made. 

In order to a well-balanced will our mental vision 
must be clear, the images which constitute the mo- 
tives must be vivid, and each have its proper valua- 
tion. Motives selected as guides to action must be 
acted upon. Mere resolution is not enough. Deeds 
must follow. 

The will is to be trained as we train the other Training of 

. , , ,1 • J? -J. the will. 

powers of the mmd — through the exercise ot its nor- 
mal function. The function of the will is to direct 
or control in the actual affairs of our life. Many 
well-meaning persons speak of training the will as if 
we could separate it from the interests and purposes 
of our daily living, and in some way put it through 



Factors en- 
tering into 
a well- 
balanced 
will. 



242 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



This must 
be in con- 
nection 
with daily- 
life. 



All have 
opportu- 
nity for 
training 
the will. 



its paces merely for the sake of adding to its general 
strength. This view is all wrong. There is no such 
thing as genei-al power of will. Will is always re- 
quired in specific acts and emergencies, and it is pre- 
cisely upon such matters that it must be exercised if 
it is to be cultivated. 

What is needed in developing the will is a deep 
moral interest in whatever we set out to do, and a high 
purpose to do it up to the limit of our powers. With- 
out this, any artificial exercises, no matter how care- 
fully they are devised or how heroically they are 
carried out, cannot but fail to fit us for the real tests 
of life; with it, artificial exercises are superfluous. 
It matters not so much what our vocation as how it 
is performed. The most commonplace human experi- 
ence is rich in opportunities for the highest form of 
expression possible to the will — that of directing us 
into right lines of action, and of holding us to our 
best in the accomplishment of some dominant purpose. 

There is no one set form of exercise which alone 
will serve to train the will. The student pushing 
steadily toward his goal in spite of poverty and grind- 
ing labor; the teacher who, though unappreciated 
and poorly paid, yet performs every duty with con- 
scientious thoroughness; the man who stands firm in 
the face of temptation; the person whom heredity or 
circumstance has handicapped, but who, nevertheless, 
courageously fights his battle; the countless men and 
women everywhere whose names are not known to 
fame, but who stand in the hard places, bearing the 
heat and the toil with brave, unflinching hearts — these 
are the ones who are developing a moral fiber and 
strength of will which will stand in the day of stress. 
Better a thousand times such training as this in the 



THE WILL 243 

thick of life's real conflicts than any volitional calis- 
thenics or priggish self-denials entered into solely for 
the training of the will ! 

We have seen in this discussion that will is a mode Will the 
of control — control of our thoughts and, through our fofnfof 
thoughts, of our actions. Will may be looked upon, "^^ntal life, 
then, as the culmination of the mental life, the high- 
est form of directing agent within us. Beginning 
with the direction of our simplest movements, it goes 
on until it governs the current of our life in the pur- 
suit of some distant ideal. 

Just how far the will can go in its control, just how Freedom 
far man is a free moral agent, has long been one of Limita^^ ' 
the mooted questions among the philosophers. But *^°'^^- 
some few facts are clear. If the will can exercise full 
control over all our acts, it by this very fact deter- 
mines our character; and character spells destiny. 
There is not the least doubt, however, that the will 
in thus directing us in the achievement of a destiny 
works under two limitations: First ^ every individual 
enters upon life with a large stock of inherited ten- 
dencies, which go far to shape his interests and aspi- 
rations. And these are important factors in the work 
of volition. Second, we all have our setting in the 
midst of a great material and social environment, 
which is largely beyond our power to modify, and 
whose influences are constantly playing upon us and 
molding us according to their type. 

Yet there is nothing in this thought to discourage These iimi- 
us. For these very limitations have in them our hope condrtL^l^s^ 
of a larger freedom. Man's heredity, coming to him ^^ freedom, 
through ages of conflict with the forces of nature, 
with his brother man, and with himself, has deeply 
instilled in him the spirit of independence and self- 
17 



244 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Freedom 
grows with 
successful 
human ex- 
pel ience; 



control. It has trained him to deliberate, to choose, 
to achieve. It has developed in him the power to will. 
Likewise man's environment, in which he must live 
and work, furnishes the problems which his life work 
is to solve, and out of whose solution the will receives 
its only true development. 

It is through the action and interaction of these 
two factors, then, that man is to work out his destiny. 
What he is, coupled with what he may do, leads him 
to what he may become. Every man possesses in 
some degree a spark of divinity, a sovereign indi- 
viduality, a power of independent initiative. This is 
all he needs to make him free — free to do his best in 
whatever walk of life he finds himself. If he will 
but do this, the doing of it will lead him into a con- 
stantly growing freedom, and he can voice the cry of 
every earnest heart: 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul! 
As the swift seasons roll! 
' Leave thy low- vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 

EXERCISES 



Give illustrations from your own experience of the various 
types of actions mentioned in this discussion. 

From your own experience of the last hour, what examples 
of ideomotor action can you give? Would it have been 
better in some cases had you stopped to deliberate? 

Are you easily influenced by prejudice or personal preference 
in making decisions? What recent decisions have been thus 
affected? 



THE WILL 245 

Can you classify the various ones of your decisions which 
you can recall under the four types mentioned in the text? 
Under which class does the largest number fall? Have you 
a tendency to drift with the crowd? Are you independent 
in deciding upon and following out a line of action? 

What is the value of advice? Ought advice to do more 
than to assist in getting all the evidence on a case before the 
one who is to decide? 

Can you judge yourself well enough to tell to which voli- 
tional type you belong? Are you overimpulsive? Are you 
stubborn? What is the difference between stubbornness 
and firmness? Suppose you ask your instructor, or a friend, 
to assist you in classifying yourself as to volitional type. 

Are you troubled with indecision ; that is, do you have hard 
work to decide in trivial matters even after you know all the 
facts in the case? What is the cause of these states of in- 
decision? the remedy? 

Have you a strong power of will? Can you control your 
attention? Do you submit easily to temptation? Can you 
hold yourself up to a high degree of effort? Can you persevere? 

Have you ever failed in the attainment of some cherished 
ideal because you could not bring yourself to pay the price 
in sacrifice or effort necessary? 

Are you using the problems and difficulties of your every- 
day work to grow in strength of will? Have you a purpose 
which you are bending every effort to accomplish? Are you 
coming more and more to be the master of yourself? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter XXII. 
James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XXIII. 
Royce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chapter XV. 
AngeU, \\ Psychology," Chapters XX and XXU. 



CHAPTER XVI 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 



A brief 
summary. 



Inter-re- 
lation of 
impression 
and ex- 
pression. 



Our many 
sources of 
impres- 
sions. 



We have already seen that the mind and the body 
are associated in a copartnership in which each is an 
indispensable and active member. We have seen that 
the body gets its dignity and worth from its relation 
with the mind, and that the mind is dependent on the 
body for the crude material of its thought, and also 
for the carrying out of its mandates in securing adap- 
tation to our environment. We have seen as a corol- 
lary of these facts that the efficiency of both mind and 
body is conditioned by the manner in which each 
carries out its share of the mutual activities. 

No impression without corresponding expression has 
become a maxim in both physiology and psychology. 
Inner life implies self-expression in external activi- 
ties. The stream of impressions pouring in upon us 
hourly from our environment must have means of ex- 
pression if development is to follow. We cannot be 
passive recipients, but must be active participants in 
the educational process. We must not only be able to 
know and feel, but to do. 

The nature of the impressions which come to us and 
how they all lead on toward ultimate expression is 
shown in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 19). Our 
material environment is thrusting impressions upon 
us every moment of our life ; also, the material objects 
with which we deal have become so saturated with 

246 



248 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

social values that each comes to us with a double sig- 
nificance, and what an object means often stands for 
more than what it is. From the lives of people with 
whom we daily mingle; from the wider circle whose 
lives do not immediately touch ours, but who are inter- 
preted to us by the press, by history and literature; 
from the social institutions into which have gone the 
lives of millions, and of which our lives form a part, 
there come to us constantly a flood of impressions 
whose influence cannot be measured. So likewise with 
religious impressions. God is all about us and within 
us. He speaks to us from every nook and corner of 
nature, and communes with us through the still small 
voice from within, if we will but listen. The Bible, 
religious instruction, and the lives of good people are 
other sources of religious impressions constantly tend- 
ing to mold our lives. The beautiful in nature, art, 
and human conduct constantly appeals to us in aesthetic 
impressions. 
These all Each of these groups of impressions may be sub- 

ward ei- divided and extended into an almost infinite number 
pression ^^^ Variety, the different groups meeting and overlap- 
ping, it is true, yet each preserving reasonably distinct 
characteristics. A common characteristic of them all, 
as shown in the diagram, is that they all point toward 
expression. The varieties of light, color, form, and 
distance which we get through vision are not merely 
that we may know these phenomena of nature, but 
that, knowing them, we may use the knowledge in mak- 
ing proper responses to our environment. Our power 
to know human sympathy and love through our social 
impressions are not merely that we may feel these 
emotions, but that, feeling them, we may act in 
response to them. 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 249 



It is impossible to classify logically in any simple 
scheme all the possible forms of expression. The dia- 
gram will serve, however, to call attention to some of 
the chief modes of bodily expression, and also to the 
results of the bodily expressions in the arts and voca- 
tions. Here again the process of subdivision and ex- 
tension can be carried out indefinitely. The laugh can 
be made to tell many different stories. Crying may 
express bitter sorrow or uncontrollable joy. Vocal 
speech may be carried on in a thousand tongues. Dra- 
matic action may be made to portray the whole range 
of human feeling. Plays and games are wide enough 
in their scope to satisfy the demands of all ages and 
every people. The handicrafts cover so wide a range 
that the material progress of civilization can be classed 
under them, and indeed without their development the 
arts and vocations would be impossible. Architecture, 
sculpture, painting, music, and literature have a thou- 
sand possibilities both in technique and content. Like- 
wise the modes of society, conduct, and religion are 
unlimited in their forms of expression. 

While it is more blessed to give than to receive, it is 
somewhat harder in the doing ; for more of the self is, 
after all, involved in expression than in impression. 
Expression needs to be cultivated as an art ; for who 
can express all he thinks, or feels, or conceives ? Who 
can do his innermost self justice when he attempts to 
express it in language, in music, or in marble? The 
painter answers when praised for his work, " If you 
could but see the picture I intended to paint ! ' ' The 
pupil says, " I know, but cannot tell." The friend 
says, ' ' I wish I could tell you how sorry I am. ' ' The 
actor complains, " If I could only portray the passion 
as I feel it, I could bring all the world to my feet ! ' ' 



Possible 
forms of 
expression. 



Limita- 
tions of 
expression : 
cultivation 
needed. 



250 THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 

The body, being of grosser structure than the mind, 
must always lag somewhat behind in expressing the 
mind's states; yet, so perfect is the harmony between 
the two, that with a body well trained to respond to 
the mind's needs, comparatively little of the spiritual 
need be lost in its expression through the material. 
Intellectual Nor are we to think that cultivation of expression 
pression. ' results in better power of expression alone, or that 
lack of cultivation results only in decreased power of 
expression. There is also a distinct mental value in 
expression. An idea always assumes new clearness 
and wider relations when it is expressed. Michael 
Angelo, making his plans for the great cathedral, 
found his first concept of the structure expanding and 
growing more beautiful as he developed his plans. 
The sculptor, beginning to model the statue after the 
image which he has in his mind, finds the image grow- 
ing and becoming more expressive and beautiful as the 
clay is molded and formed. The writer finds the scope 
and worth of his book growing as he proceeds with 
the writing. The student, beginning doubtfully on 
his construction in geometry, finds the truth growing 
clearer as he proceeds. The child with a dim and 
hazy notion of the meaning of the story in history or 
literature discovers that the meaning grows clear as 
he himself works out its expression in speech, in the 
handicrafts, or in dramatic representation. So we may 
apply the test to any realm of thought whatever, and 
the law holds good: It is not in its apprehension hut 
in its expression that a truth finally becomes assimi- 
lated to our body of usable knowledge. And this 
means that in all training of the body through its 
motor expression we are to remember that the mind 
must be behind the act ; that the intellect must guide 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 251 

the hand ; that the object is not to make skillful fingers 
alone, but to develop clear and intelligent thought as 
well. 

Expression also has a distinct moral value. There Moral 
are many more people of good intentions than of moral expres^ 
character in the world. The rugged proverb tells us ^^°^- 
that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 
And how easy it is to form good resolutions! Who 
of us has not, after some moral struggle, said, ' ' I will 
break the bonds of this habit: I will enter upon that 
heroic line of action ! ' ' and then, satisfied for the time 
with having made the resolution, continued in the old 
path, until we were surprised later to find that we had 
never got beyond the resolution? It is not in the 
moment of the resolve but in the moment when the 
resolve is carried out in action that the moral value 
inheres. To take a stand on a question of right and 
wrong means more than to show one's allegiance to 
the right — it clears one's own moral vision and gives 
him command of himself. Expression is, finally, the 
only true test for our morality. Lacking moral expres- 
sion, we may stand in the class of those who are merely 
good, but we can never enter the class of those who 
are good for something. One cannot but wonder what 
would happen if all the people in the world who are 
morally right should give expression to their moral 
sentiments, not in words alone, but in deeds. Surely 
the millennium would speedily come, not only among 
the nations, but in the lives of men. 

True religious experience demands expression. The Religious 
older conception of a religious life was to escape from expres- 
the world and live a life of communion and contem- ^^°^' 
plation in some secluded spot, ignoring the world 
thirsting without. Later religious teaching, however, 



252 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Social 
value of 
expres- 
sion. 



recognizes the fact that religion cannot consist in 
drinking in blessings alone, no matter how ecstatic 
the feeling which may accompany the process ; that it 
is not the receiving, but this along with the giving 
that enriches the life. To give the cup of cold water, 
to visit the widow and the fatherless, to comfort and 
help the needy and forlorn — this is not only scriptural 
but it is psychological. Only as religious feeling goes 
out into religious expression, can we have a normal 
religious experience. 

The criterion of an education once was, How much 
does he know? The world did not expect an edu- 
cated man to do anything; he was to be put on a 
pedestal and admired from a distance. But this cri- 
terion is now obsolete. Society cares little how much 
we know if it does not enable us to do. People no 
longer merely admire knowledge, but insist that the 
man of education shall put his shoulder to the wheel 
and lend a hand wherever help is needed. Education 
is no longer to set men apart from their fellows, but 
to make them more efficient comrades and helpers in 
the world's work. Not the man who knows chemistry 
and botany, but he who can use this knowledge to make 
two blades of grass grow where but one grew before is 
the true benefactor of his race. In short, the world 
demands services returned for opportunities afforded ; 
it expects social expression to result from social im- 
pressions. 

And this is also best for the individual, for only 
through social service can we attain to a full realiza- 
tion of the social values in our environment. Only 
thus can we enter fully into the social heritage of the 
ages which we receive from books and institutions; 
only thus can we come into the truest and best rela- 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 253 

tions with humanity in a common brotherhood; only 
thus can we live the broader and more si^ificant life, 
and come to realize the largest possible social self. 

The educational significance of the truths illustrated The idea 
in the diagram and the discussion has been somewhat sion in 
slow in taking hold. This has been due not alone to the Pedagogy, 
slowness of the educational world to grasp a new idea, 
but also to the practical difficulties connected with 
adapting the school exercises as well to the expression 
side of education as to the impression. From the fall 
of Athens on down to the time of Froebel the schools 
were constituted on the theory that pupils were to 
receive education, that they were to drink in knowl- 
edge, that their minds were to be stored with facts. 
Children were to "be seen and not heard." Educa- 
tion was largely a process of gorging the memory with 
information. 

Now it is evident that it is far easier to provide for Easier to 
this passive side of education than for the active side. Theimpres- 
All that is needed in the former case is to have teach- educStlon.^ 
ers and books reasonably full of information, and 
pupils sufficiently docile to receive it. But in the lat- 
ter case, the equipment must be more extensive. If 
the child is to be allowed to carry out his impressions 
into expressions, if he is actually to do something 
himself, then he must be supplied with adequate 
equipment. 

So far as the home life was concerned, the child of Handi- 
several generations ago was at a decided advantage the old- 
over the child of to-day on the expression side of his 
education. The homes of that day were beehives of 
industry, in which a dozen handicrafts were taught 
and practiced. The buildings, the farm implements, 
and much of the furniture of the home were made 



time home. 



254 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



This lack- 
ing in the 
home of 
to-day. 



The school 
to take up 
this line of 
work. 



from the native timber. The material for the cloth- 
ing of the family was produced on the farm, made into 
cloth, and finally into garments in the home. Nearly 
all the supplies for the table came likewise from the 
farm. These industries demanded the combined efforts 
of the family, and each child did his or her part. 

But that day is past. One third of our people live 
in cities, and even in the village and on the farm the 
handicrafts of the home have been relegated to the 
factory, and everything comes into the home ready 
for use. The telephone, the mail carrier, and the de- 
liveryman do all the errands even, and the child in 
the home is deprived of responsibility and of nearly 
all opportunity for manual expression. This is no 
one's fault, for it is just one phase of a great indus- 
trial readjustment in society. Yet the fact remains 
that the home has lost an important element in edu- 
cation, which the school must supply if we are not 
to be the losers educationally by the change. 

And modern educational method is insisting pre- 
cisely on this point. A few years ago the boy caught 
whittling in school was a fit subject for a flogging; 
the boy is to-day given bench and tools, and is in- 
structed in their use. Then the child was punished 
for drawing pictures; now we are using draAving as 
one of the best modes of expression. Then instruc- 
tion in singing was intrusted to an occasional evening 
class, which only the older children could attend, and 
which was taught by some itinerant singing master; 
to-day we make music one of our most valuable school 
exercises. Then all play time was so much time 
wasted; now we recognize play as a necessary and 
valuable mode of expression and development. Then 
dramatic representation was confined to the occasional 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 255 

exhibition or evening entertainment; now it has be- 
come a recognized part of our school work. Then it 
was a crime for pupils to communicate with each 
other in school; now a part of the school work is 
planned so that pupils work in groups, and thus re- 
ceive social training. Then our schoolrooms were 
destitute of every vestige of beauty; to-day many of 
them are artistic and beautiful. 

This statement of the case is rather over-optimistic Many 
if applied to our whole school system, however. For yet°ack-^^ 
there are still many schools in which all forms of ^^s- 
handicraft are unknown, and in which the only train- 
ing in artistic expression is that which comes from 
caricaturing the teacher. Singing is still an unknown 
art to many teachers. The play instinct is yet looked 
upon with suspicion and distrust in some quarters. 
A large number of our schoolrooms are as barren and 
ugly to-day as ever, and contain an atmosphere as 
stifling to all forms of natural expression. We can 
only comfort ourselves with Holmes's maxim, that it 
matters not so much where we stand as in what direc- 
tion we are moving. And we certainly are moving 
toward a larger development and greater efficiency 
in expression on the part of those who pass through 
our schools. 

Finally, all that has been said in this discussion Expression 
has direct reference to what we call character — that acter. 
mysterious something which we so often hear eulo- 
gized and so seldom analyzed. Character has two 
distinct phases, which may be called the subjective 
phase and the social phase ; or, stating it differently, 
character is both what we are and what we do. The 
first of these has to do with the nature of the real, 
innermost self ; and the last, with the modes in which 



256 



THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION 



Character 
a process. 



Its two 
lines of 
develop- 
ment. 



this self finds expression. And it is fair to say that 
those about us are concerned with what we are chiefly 
from its relation to what we do. 

Character is not a thing, but a process; it is the 
succession of our thoughts and acts from hour to hour. 
It is not something which we can hoard and protect 
and polish unto a more perfect day, but it is the 
everyday self in the process of living. And the only 
way in which it can be made or marred is through 
the nature of this stream of thoughts and acts which 
constitute the day's life — is through being or doing 
well or ill. 

The cultivation of character must, then, ignore 
neither of these two lines. To neglect the first is to 
forget that it is out of the abundance of the heart 
that the mouth speaks; that a corrupt tree cannot 
bring forth good fruit ; that the act is the true index 
of the soul. To omit the second is to leave the char- 
acter half formed, the will weak, and the life ineffi- 
cient and barren of results. On the one hand, the 
mind must be supplied with noble ideas and high 
ideals, with right emotions and worthy ambitions. On 
the other hand, the proper connection must be estab- 
lished between these mental states and appropriate 
acts. And the acts must finally grow into habits, so 
that we naturally and inevitably translate our ideas 
and ideals, our emotions and ambitions into deeds. 
Our character must be strong not in thought and feel- 
ing alone, but also in the power to return to the world 
its finished product in the form of service. 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND DEVELOPMENT 257 



EXERCISES 

The list of impressions as given in the diagram may be still 
further subdivided. Write down a new list, inserting as 
many subheads as you can think of. 

From what sources in nature do you receive the greatest 
aesthetic enjoyment? in art? What traits in conduct would 
you describe as beautiful f What is a ''beautiful life"? 

Make a study of the different types of laughter you hear, 
and seek to determine the mental state which each expresses. 

What did a noted sculptor mean when he said that a smile 
at the eyes cannot be depended upon as can one at the mouth? 

Make a list of the most important handicrafts. Have you 
ever considered the part that the human hand has played in 
civihzation? 

What examples have you observed in children's plays 
showing their love for dramatic representation? 

What handicrafts are the most suitable for children of 
primary grades? for the grammar school? for the high school? 

Do you number those among your acquaintance who 
seem bright enough so far as learning is concerned, but who 
cannot get anything accompUshed? Is the trouble on the 
expression side of their character? 

What about your own powers of expression? Are you 
seeking to cultivate expression in new lines? Is there danger 
in attempting too many lines? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 

Warner, " Physical Expression." 
James, " Talks to Teachers," Chapters IV-VII. 
Rowe, "The Physical Nature of the Child," Chapter V. 
Ham, " Mind and Hand," Chapters I, II, XI, XIII, XIV, 
and XV. 



INDEX 



Action, complex, 51. 

Factors involved in, 51. 

Feeling and, 223. 

Ideals and, 140, 141. 

Ideo-motor, 229. 

Image and act, 230. 

Instinctive, 228. 

Reflex, 227. 

Sensory motor, 50. 

Volitional preceded by non-voli- 
tional, 229. 
Activity, fundamental fact in life, 
226. 

In childhood, 209. 

Necessity for motor, 48. 
Adolescence, interests of, 210. 
Angell, quoted, 155. 
Association, devices for, 125. 

Experience unified by, 116. 

How accomplished, 114. 

Is inexorable, 117. 

Laws of, 114, 115. 

Paths of, 50 (Diagram). 
Attention, 12-24. 

Activity conditioned by, 21, 22. 

Control of, 21. 

Cultivation of, 18. 

Effects of, 13, 14. 

How we attend, 15 (Fig. 16). 

Habits of, 22. 

Interest and, 19, 22. 

Memory and, 125. 

18 259 



Attention, nature of, 12. 
Types of, 21. 

Brain, individual differences in, 
110. 
Nutrition and efficiency of, 52. 
Relation to mind, 25, 26. 
Structure of, 32-35. 
Bridgman, Laura, cited in illustra- 
tion, 46. 

Cells, fimction of, 29. 

Structure of, 28. 

Undeveloped, 44. 
Cerebellum, 32. 
Cerebrum, 32. 
Chamberlain, quoted, 174. 
Character, development of, 256. 

Expression and, 255. . 

Interest and, 207. 

Process, a, 256. 
Child, the, at birth, 162. 

Concept-building of, 148. 

Fears of, 176. 

Interests of, 209. 

Percept-building of, 83. 
J Plays of, 177. 

Problem which confronts, 82. 

Thinking of, 144, 145. 
Choice, how accomplished, 231. 
Classification, how accomplished, 
147. 



260 



INDEX 



Color, how produced, 174. 
Concept, the, definition of, 149. 

Nature and growth, 148. 

Necessity for growth of, 153. 

Use in classification, 147. 

Use in judgment, 152. 

Use in thinking, 149. 
Consciousness, complexity of, re- 
lated to action, 226. 

Nature of, 4-10. 

Personal character of, 1. 

Threefold process, a, 10. 

Wave of, the, 6, 7. 
Cord, spinal, 30, 31. 
Cramming, effects of, 123. 
Crises, and emotion, 216. 

Decision, definition of, 236. 

Emotional factor in, 232. 

Immediate or delayed, 231. 

Impulsive, 237. 

Influenced by mood, 187. 

Normal, 241. 

Obstructed, 239. 

Quick, 238. 

Test of the will, 235. 

Types of, 232-235. 

Under effort, 235. 
Deduction, forms of, 156. 

Relation to induction, 157. 
Deliberation, 231. 
Disposition, moods and, 188. 
Division of labor, in the cortex, 
38-40. 

In the nervous system, 37. 
Donaldson, quoted, 44. 
Dumont, quoted, 59. 

Education, environment and, 52. 
Expression and, 249-255. 
Instinct and, 162, 165. 



Education involves both mind and 
body, 43. 

Play and, 179. 
Effort, influenced by mood, 187. 

Interest and, 206. 
Emotion, 212-225. 

Control of, 216, 218. 

Cultivation of, 220-223. 

Definition of, 212. 

Dependence on expression, 217. 

Enjoyment and, 220. 

Feeling and, 213. 

Instinct and, 212. 

Physical response and, 213. 

Physiological explanation of, 214. 

Relief through expression of, 217. 
Emotional balance, 219. 

Factor in decision, 232. 

Habits, 224. 

Overexcitement, 222. 
End organs, function of, 36. 

Response to stimuli, 40. 
Environment, emotional factor in, 
221. 

Influence of, 173. 

Richness of, 81. 
Experience, conditions of thinking, 
90. 

Crises of, and emotion, 216. 

Freedom of will and, 244. 

How conserved, 93. 

Potentially possible to present, 
94. 

Present and future interpreted by, 
91. 

Race experience and instinct, 
161, 163. 

Related to emotions, 215. 

Sentiments grow from, 190. 

Unified by association, 116. 
Expression, cultivation of, 249, 



INDEX 



261 



Expression, dependence of emotion 
upon, 217. 
Emotional, 214, 224. 
Emotional relief through, 217. 
Impression and, 246, 248. 
Limitations of, 249. 
Possible forms of, 249. 

Fatigue, recuperation from, 53. 
Fear, heredity of, 175. 

In life of child, 176. 

Instinct of, 174. 

In the dark, 175. 

Of being alone, 176. 
Feeling, 182-194. 

Action and, 223. 

As habit, 224. 

Cognition and, 183. 

Definition of, 182. 

Emotion and, 213. 

Importance of, 182. 

Mood, or feeling tone, 185. 

Qualities of, 184. 
Fibers, association possible through, 
112, 114. 

Development of, 48-50. 

Function of, 29. 

Kinds of, 35. 

Origm of, 28. 

Undeveloped, 45. 
Freedom and motor development, 
48. 

OfthewiU,243. 

Habit, 56-69. 

Achievement and, 63. 
Attention and, 66. 
Danger in, 66. 
Economizing effort, 64. 
Efficiency and, 64. 
Experience conserved by, 93. 



Habit, grows out of instincts, 168. 

Influence of, 56. 

Interest and, 198. 

Maxims for forming, 67, 68. 

Memory and, 109-113. 

Morality and, 66. 

Of indecision, 235. 

Physical, 57. 

Physical basis of, 58. 
Habits, emotional, 224. 

Mental, 54. 
Hearing, tones and noises from, 

78. 
Heredity, affects mode of imitation, 
171. 

Fear, 175. 

Influence of, 161. 
Hugo, illustration from, 236. 

Ideals, action and, 140, 141. 

Imagination and, 135. 
Image and act, 230. 

Motor power of an, 230. 
•/Related to emotion, 218. 
Imagery, development of, 103-105. 

Experience conserved by, 93. 

Mental, 90-106. 

Types of, 96, 97, 99, 111, 112. 

Value of wide range of, 99. 

Varying power of, 97, 98. 
Images, indecision a conflict of, 
231. 

In interpreting literature, 100- 
102. 

Introspective test of, 95-97. 

Material of imagination, the, 136, 
137. 

Material of memory, the. 111. 

Motor, 102, 229-231. 

Reconstruction of, 104. 

Viewed by introspection, 95. 



262 



INDEX 



Imagination, 128-142. 

Constructive power of, 136. 

Conduct and, 134. 

Emotion and, 218. 

Factors in, 137. 

Functions of, 129-135. 

Ideals and plans through, 135. 

In literature and art, 131. 

Interpreting others' thought, 129. 

Material of, 136. 

Practical phases of, 133. 

Science and, 130. 

Thinking and, 132. 
Imitation, conduct and, 171. 

Conscious and unconscious, 172. 

Individuality in, 171. 

Instinct of, 170. 

Language and, 171. 
Impression, expression and, 246, 
248. 

Sources of, 246. 
Inattention, results of, 18. 

Types of, 16, 17. 
Induction, deduction and, 159. 

Nature of, 157. 

Necessity for broad, 157. 
"Inductive leap," the, 158. 
Instinct, 161-181. 

Blindness of unmodified, 164. 

Definition of, 162. 

Emotion and, 212. 

Human, 169. 

Individual habit and, 168. 

Modified by education, 165. 

Of fear, 174-177. 

Of imitation, 170-173. 

Of play, 177-180. 

Racial habits and, 164. 

Result of race experience, 161, 
163. 
Instinctive acts, 228. 



Instincts, succession of, 165. 

To be utilized, 168. 

Transitoriness of, 166. 

Useless, 167. 

Utilization of, 181. 
Interest, 195-211. 

Attention and, 19, 22. 

Character and, 207. 

Direct and indirect, 199. 

Dynamic phase of, 117. 

Evolution of, 208. 

Habit and, 198. 

Nature of, 196. 

Objective and subjective side of, 
197. 

Order of development of, 208- 
210. 

Selection among, 203. 

Specialization in, 204. 

Transitoriness of, 201. 

Value of, 202. 

Will related to, 207. 
Interests, balance among, 205. 

Narrow and broad, 204. 
Introspection, images known by, 95. 

Means of knowing mind, 2. 

Test in, 95-97. 

James, quoted, 163, 169. 
Joints, sensations from, 81. 
Judgment, definition of, 150. 

In concepts and percepts, 151. 

Influenced by feeling, 187. 

Leading from particulars to gen- 
erals, 152. 

Remedy for faulty, 153. 

Validity of, 152 

Knowledge, dependence on ex- 
perience, 77. 
From various senses, 72. 



INDEX 



263 



Knowledge, raw material of, 81. 
Through judgment, 152. 

Laws, of memory, 113, 114. 
Light, how produced, 73. 
Localization of function, in the 

cortex, 38, 39. 
In the nervous system, 37, 40, 

141. 

Meaning, dependent on relationship, 

143. 
Memory, 107-127. 

Devices for, 125. 

Discriminative, 120. 

Factors involved in, 111. 

How exercised, 108. 

Improvement of, 122, 123. 

Laws of, 113, 114. 

Materials of, 111, 112. 

Physical basis of, 108. 

Specialized, 121. 

What is a good, 118-120. 

What is retained in, 107, 108. 
Mind, 1-11. 

And brain, 25, 26. 

At birth, 27. 

Contents of stream of, 8-10. 

Dependent on senses, 42. 

Known by introspection, 2. 

Nature of, 4, 5. 

Process, a, 3, 4. 
Mood, disposition and, 188. 

How determined, 186. 

Influence of, 186, 187. 

Temperament and, 188. 
Mosso, quoted, 161. 
Motives, battle of, 231. 

Emotions as, 224. 

Interest as, 199. 

Sentiments as, 192. 



Motives, subjective, in decision, 234. 
Motor unages, 102, 229-231. 
Muscle and joint sensations, 81. 

Nervous system, central, 30. 

Conditions determining efficiency 
of, 43-54. 

Development of, 46. 

Division of labor in, 37-41. 

Indelibly records acts, 61, 68. 

Peripheral, 30, 35, 36. 

Relation to stimuli of, 40, 41. 

Strain upon, from emotion, 222. 

Structure of, 28-36. 
Neuron, structure of, 28. 
Nutrition, brain efficiency and, 52. 

Factors in, 53, 54. 

Objects, first-hand contact with, 

85. 
How defined, 144. 
How mind constructs world of, 

70, 83-85. 
Interdependence of physical and 

mental, 143. 
Qualities of, exist in mind, 73. 
Relations existing in, 147. 
Old fogies, 154. 

Perception, 70-89. 

And emotion, 214. 

And imagination, 39. 

And thought, 87. 

Experience and, 85-87. 

Of objects, how gained, 83-85. 

Of space, 85. 

Problem of the, 82. 
Personality, influence of, 173. 
Play, and initiative, 178. 

And work, 177, 179. 

In education, 179. 



264 



INDEX 



Play, instinct of, 177. 

Interest in, 209. 

Necessity for, 177- 

Points to past and future, 180. 
Purpose, factor in imagination, a, 
139. 

Qualities, objects known through, 
76, 83. 
Of objects exist in the mind, 73. 

Reasoning, definition of, 156. 

Forms of, 156-159. 

Functions of, 154. 

Process of, 155. 
Recall, dependence on retention, 
109, 111. 

How accomplished, 113. 
Relationship, among external world 
of objects, 147. 

Discovered through reasoning, 
144, 154. 

Meaning dependent upon, 143. 

Near and remote, 144, 145. 
Response, to emotion, 213. 

To sensory stimuli, 47, 70. 
Retention, and memory, 108, 109. 

Dependence on habit, 113. 

Difference in retentive power, 1 10. 

More certain than recall, 109. 

Self-expression, 246-257. 

In play, 177. 
Sensation, 70-89. 

And feeling, 183. 

And perception, 70. 

Qualities given by, 76. 

Processes of, 73-81. 

Simplest form of knowledge, 76. 
Sensations, organic, 81. 
Senses, aided by reason, 72. 



Senses, servants of the mind, 42. 

Work of, 26, 27. 
Sentiments, as motives, 192. 

How grow, 190, 193. 

Important, 189. 

Influence of, 191. 

Nature of, 189. 
Sight, qualities given by, 78. 
Skin, the sensations from, 79, 

80. 
Smell, qualities, 79. 
Sound, how produced, 75. 
Stimuli, appeal to senses by, 70. 

Character of, 41. 

Effects of sensory, 47. 

End organs and, 40. 
Syllogism, the, use in reasoning, 
156. 

Taste, qualities of, 79. 
Temperament, classes of, 189. 

Predisposes to mood, 188. 
Temperature, distribution of end 

organs of, 80. 
Thinking, 143-160. 

Affected by interest, 195. 

Affected by mood, 186. 

Concept in the, 147, 149. 

Function of, 144. 

Necessity for valid, 117. 

Use of imagination in, 132. 
Thought, dependence on experience, 
90. 

Dependence on sensation and 
perception, 87. 

Emotion and, 213. 
Touch, sensations from, 80. 

Valjean, Jean, illustrating type of 

decision, 236. 
Volition, see Will. 



INDEX 



265 



Will, 226-245. 

Acts in directing attention, 

236. 
Freedom of, 243. 
Highest form of mind, 243. 
Interest and, 207. 
Nature of, 227. 



Will, objective tests of, 237. 

Training of, 241. 

Types of, 237-241. 
Work, play and, 178, 179. 

Under incentive of interest, 198, 
206. 
Worry, evil effects of, 54. 



(1) 



STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY. 



Genetic Psychology for Teachers. 

A New Volume in The International Education Series. 
By Charles Hubbard Judd, Ph.D., Instructor in Psy- 
chology in Yale University. i2mo. Cloth, $1.20 net. 

This book deals with the facts and the principles of 
mental development. It takes up the special phase of psy- 
chology which is most important to teachers, for it traces 
the changes that are produced in mental life as a result of 
education in its various forms. 

"One almost regrets the word * Psychology,' " says Primary Educa- 
tiotif " in the title of this book, lest it might drive away some teachers 
who might suppose it to be like other psychologies. It is not. It is a 
book of life. It is a scientific study of mental development prepared 
on the teacher's plane, and full of just what teachers should know and 
what they would like to know. The book should not only be in every 
school, but would repay analytical study by principal and teachers in 
weekly teachers' meetings." 

Dr. J. J. Burns, Secretary of the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle, 
has to say : "I think Judd's ' Genetic Psychology ' a very profitable 
book for students of human nature ; therefore, excellent for teachers 
and for reading circles." 

While Miss Margaret W. Sutherland, of the Columbus Teachers' 
Reading Circle, states that " we have been using Judd's ' Genetic Psy- 
chology ' in the Columbus branch of the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle 
and have derived much pleasure and profit from it." 

The Story of the Mind. 

A Volume in The Library of Useful Stories. By Prof. 

J. Mark Baldwin. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, 35 cents 

net; postage, 4 cents additional. 

" A little book, easy to hold, pleasant to read, warranted to get read, 
without skippings, to its last word." — The Nation. 

" A healthy interest will be stimulated in psychology on the part 
of those who will carefully read the little volume." 

— The New York Times. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES* 
Dickens as an Educator. 

By James L. Hughes, Inspector of Schools, Toronto. 
Vol. 49. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 



Adopted by several State Teachers' Reading Circles. 



All teachers have read Dickens's novels with pleasure. I'robably 
few, however, have presumably thought definitely of him as a great 
educational reformer. But Inspector Hughes demonstrates that such is 
his just title. William T. Harris says of " Dickens as an Educator " : 
•• This book is sufficient to establish the claim for Dickens as an edu- 
cational reformer. He has done more than any one else to secure for 
the child considerate treatment of his tender age. Dickens stands 
apart and alone as one of the most potent influences of social reform 
in the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves to be read and studied 
by all who have to do with schools, and by all parents everywhere in 
our day and generation." Professor Hughes asserts that " Dickens 
was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and the most 
comprehensive student of childhood that England has yet produced." 
The book brings into connected form, under proper headings, the 
educational principles of this most sympathetic friend of children. 

" Mr. James L. Hughes has just published a book that will rank as one 
of the finest appreciations of Dickens ever written." — Colorado School 
yournal. 

'* Mr. Hughes has brought together in an interesting and most effective 
manner the chief teachings of Dickens on educationsd subjects. His extracts 
make the reader feel again the reality of Dickens's descriptions and the 
power of the appeal that he made for a saner, kindlier, more inspiring peda- 
gogy, and thus became, through his immense vogue, one of the chief 
instrumentalities working for the new education." — Wisconsin Journal of 
Education. 



APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



Later Volumes in the International Education Series* 

The Standard Professional Library for Teachers* 

Edited bv WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D., 

United States Commissioner of Educatiou. 

t2mOf doth, uniform binding* 

36. Herbart's A B C of Sense-Perception, by William 

J. EcKOFF, Ph. D., Pd. D $1 50 

37. Psychologic Foundations of Education, by William 

T. Harris, A. M., LL. D., United States Commissioner of 
Education 1 50 

38. History of the School System of Ontario, by G. W. 

Ross, LL. D., Minister of Education, Ontario, Canada . . 1 00 

39. Principles and Practice of Teaching, by James Johon- 

NOT. Revised 1 50 

40. School Management and School Methods, by Joseph 

Baldwin 1 50 

41. Froebel's Laws for all Teachers, by James L. Hughes 1 50 

42. Bibliography of Education, by Will H. Monroe . . 2 00 

43. The Study of the Child, by Albert E. Taylor, Ph. D. 1 25 

44. Education by Development, by Friedrich Frobbel. 

Translated by Josephine Jarvis 1 50 

45. Letters to a Mother, by Susan E. Blow 1 50 

46. Montaigne's The Education of Children, edited by 

L. E. Rector 1 00 

47. The Secondary School System of Germany, by Fred- 

erick E. Bolton, Ph. D 1 50 

48. Advanced Elementary Science, by Edward G. Howe . 1 50 

49. Dickens as an Educator, by James L. Hughes ... 1 50 

50. Principles of Education Practically Applied, by 

James M. Greenwood. Revised 1 00 

51. Student Life and Customs, by H. D. Sheldon, Ph. D., net, 1 20 

52. An Ideal School, by Preston W. Search .... net, 1 20 

53. Later Infancy of the Child, by Gabriel Compatre. 

Translated by Mary E. Wilson. (Part II of Vol. 35), net, 1 20 
54 Educational Foundations of Trade and Industry, 

by Fabian Ware net, 1 2o 

65. Genetic Psychology for Teachers, by Charles H. Judd, 

Ph.D n*^** 1 20 

66. The Evolution of the Elementary Schools of Great 

Britain, by James C. Greenough, A. M., LL. D. . net, 1 20 
%1. Thomas Platter and the Educational Renaissance 

of the Sixteenth Century. By Paul Monroe . net, 1 20 
Others in preparation. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

Later Infancy of the Child. 

By Gabriel Compayre. Translated by Mary 
E. Wilson. Vol. 53. Part II of Vol. 35. Price, 
$1.20 net. 

This book completes the translation of Professor Compayre's well- 
known essay, *' L' Evolution Intellectuale et Morale de L'Enfant." 
It brings together, in a systematic pedagogic form, what is known of 
the development of infant children so far as the facts bear on early 
education. Professor Compayre's treatise is one of the most sagacious 
and fruitful products of the modem attention to child study. Since 
the publication of the first volume (in 1896), investigation in this 
fascinating field has gone forward at a rapid pace, and an immense 
mass of new material is now available. This has been utilized and 
interpreted in its manifold applications. 

The interdependence of the two aspects of education — the study of 
the ideals of civilization and the study of the child (to discover what 
rudimentary tendencies are favorable or unfavorable to culture, and to 
ascertain the best methods of encouraging the one and of suppressing 
the other)— this interdependence has been properly balanced. 

The chapters in this volume discuss judgment and reasoning, learn- 
ing to talk, voluntary activity — walking and play, the development of 
the moral sense, weak and strong points of character, morbid tenden- 
cies, etc., and the evolution of the sense of selfhood and personality. 
This part is even more valuable than that already published in Vol. 
XXXV, and teachers everywhere will welcome it as a highly suggestive 
contribution. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES- 
Books by and about Froebel. 

The Education of Man. By Friedrich Froebel. Translated 
by W. N. Hailmann, Ph. D. $1.50. 
In all directions this book sounds the keynote of a new education. It lifts all educa 
tional work from narrow, merely utilitarian standpoints, to an intensely and broadly 
Christian view of life; it measures every activity by its influence on character and full 
life efficiency. In all questions of system and method Froebel places the teacher on 
solid ground, and indicates the way to loftiest achievemenu. 

Froebel's Laws for all Teachers. By James L.Hughes. $1.50. 

This book is a clear and comprehensive statement of Froebel's principles, adapted 
to the work of every one engaged in the education and the trainuig of humanity in the 
kindergarten, the school, the university, or the home. It is the most intelligible expo- 
flition of the fundamental principles of the New Education as revealed by Froebel. 

Pedagogics of the Kindergarten. By Friedrich Froebel. 
Translated by Josephine Jarvis. $1.50. 
This volume conlams a practical elucidation of the theories of Froebel, and will be 
(nvaluable to earnest educators— particularly to parents, kindergartners, and primary 
•chool-teachers. Froebel explains very fully and carefully his motives for the enure 
plan of the work and play of the kindergarten, and its purpose and influence on life. 

Education by Development. By Friedrich Froebel. Trans- 
lated by Josephine Jarvis. $1.50. 
In this volume the educational principles underlying the " gifts " are more thor- 
oughly discussed than in " ihe Pedagogics of the Kindergarten." The student ol 
Froebel has great advantage, therefore, m reading " Education by Development, ' in- 
asmuch as Froebel cast new light on his thoughts in each exposition that he made. 

The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich Froebel's 
Mother- Play. By H. R. Eliot and Susan E. Blow. $1.50. 

The Songs and Music of Friedrich Froebel's Mother-Play. 

Prepared and arranged by Susan E. Blow. $1.50. 

The increased interest in kindergarten work and the demand for a clearer exposition 
of Froebel's philosophy have given these excellent books the widest popularity. No 
one could be better equipped for their preparation than Miss Blow. In the first vol- 
ume the original pictures have been faithfuUy reproduced. 

Symbolic Education. A Commentary on Froebel's Mother-Play. 
By Susan E. Blow. $1.50. 

This book discusses in a practical way the foundations of the philosophy of Froebel 
•s found in "The Mother's Songs and Games," and shows the significance of the 
kindergarten and its claims for being the comer-stone upon which all child educatooo 
should rest. It is emphatically a book for mothers as well as for teachers. 

Froebel's Mother-Play Pictures. Three series. Plain and 
colored. See special list for prices and description. 



APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



NEWS FOR KINDERGARTNERS. 



The Froebel Mother- Play Pictures, as reproduced 
in Miss Blow's book, " Mottoes and Commentaries," 
are now furnished printed in colors from lithographic 
plates. 

I. Play with the Limbs. 2. The Wind. 3. All Gone. 4. Tick- 
Tack. 5. Grass Mowing. 6. Beckoning the Chickens. 7. Beckoning 
the Pigeons. 8. The Fish in the Brook. 9. Pat-a-Cake. 10. The 
Bird's Nest. 11. The Flower Basket. 12. The Pigeon House. 
13. Naming the Fingers. 14. The Greeting. 15. The Family. 
16. The Children on the Tower. 17. The Child and the Moon. 
18. The Light-Bird. 19. The Shadow Rabbit. 20. The Little Win- 
dow. 21. The Carpenter. 22. The Bridge. 23. The Farm-Yard Gate. 
24. The Garden Gate. 25. The Little Gardener. 26. The Wheel- 
wright. 27. The Joiner. 28. The Knights and the Good Child. 
29. The Knights and the Bad Child. 30. The Toyman and the 
Maiden. 31. The Toyman and the Boy. 32. The Church. 

Size of pictures, 4x6 inches. Size of sheet, 5x7 inches. Price 
per dozen, 18 cents ; per hundred, $1.25. 

This series of the Froebel Mother-Play Pictures is designed for the use 
of the pupils in kindergarten classes. The low price and convenient size of 
these reprints make it practicable to place in the hands of each child a copy 
of the picture which is the subject of a lesson at any time, while the coloring 
makes them not only more attractive, but brings out the details of the pic- 
ture with much more distinctness. 

Also, the complete list of forty-six pictures reprinted from •* Mot- 
toes and Commentaries," uncolored. Per hundred, 50 cents. 

Other reproductions of Froebel's Mother-Play Pictures : The 
Bridge ; Beckoning the Pigeons ; The Wheelwright. Artistically 
printed in colors from stone. 

Size of pictures, 10x15 inches. Size of sheet, 14x21 inches. 
Price per dozen, $2.00. Single picture, postpaid, 18 cents. 



The following are uncolored : The Bird's Nest ; The Wind ; The 
Knights and the Good Child ; The Pigeon House ; Pat-a-Cake ; The 
Fish in the Brook ; The Little Gardener ; The Children on the Tower ; 
The Greeting; The Family; The Light-Bird; The Child and the 
Moon. 

Size of pictures, 12x18 inches. Size of sheet, 17x23^^ inches. 
Price per dozen, $1.25. Single picture, postpaid, 12 cents. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES- 

Principles of Education Practically 
Applied. — Revised. 

By James M. Greenwood, Superintendent 
of Schools, Kansas Cicy, Mo. Vol. 50. Ji.oo. 

This eminently practical book assumes that education 
is a science ; that school-teachers can understand the 
principles of this science ; and that in their daily work 
they can apply these with unerring certainty to the chil- 
dren under their control. The teacher is told plainly 
what to do as well as what to avoid. The directions 
therefore are simple, pointed, and emphatic. 

Since the original publication of this book (1887) some 
methods, then foreshadowed, have been worked out in 
detail, such as the teaching of arithmetic, geography, and 
United States history. In this revised edition several 
chapters have been recast to indicate the best methods, 
while the spirit and general tone of helpfulness in the first 
edition have been preserved intact. 

The author's independent and alert observations will 
be found an invaluable aid to the practical teacher, not 
only in the matter of inventing successful devices, but in 
seeing the eternal principles that form the basis of intelli- 
gent criticism. 

The book deals with school and class management; 
the conduct of recitations ; the art of questioning ; 
methods of teaching reading, composition, language, pen- 
manship, geography, history, and arithmetic. There is an 
extremely sensible chapter on Health and Hygiene, and the 
volume closes with " Only a Boy," a bright and suggestive 
study of familiar types. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

Psychological Foundations 
of Education. 

An Attempt to Show the Genesis of the Higher 
Faculties of the Mind. By W. T. Harris, A.M., 
LL.D., United States Commissioner of Education. 
Vol.37. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

In offering this book to the educational public the author feels it 
necessary to explain its point of view. Psychology- is too frequently 
only an inventory of certain so-called " faculties of the mind," such as 
the five senses, imagination, conception, reasoning, etc. And teachers 
have been offered such an inventory under the name of " educational 
psychology." It has been assumed that education has to do with 
"cultivatmg the faculties." Perhaps the analogy of the body has 
been taken as valid for the soul, and, inasmuch as we can train 
this or that muscle, it is inferred that we can cultivate this or that 
faculty. The defect of this mode of view is that it leaves out of 
sight the genesis of the higher faculties from the lower ones. 
Muscles are not consecutive, the one growing out of another and 
taking its place, but they are co-ordinate and side by side in space, 
whereas in mind the higher faculties take the place of the lower 
faculties and in some sort absorb them. Conception, instead of 
existing side by side with perception, hke the wheels of a clock, 
contains the latter in a more complete form of activity. Sense- 
perception, according to the definition, should apprehend individual 
things, and conception should take note of classes or species. But 
conception really transforms perception into a seeing of each objec< 
as a member of a class, so that the Une between perception and con- 
ception has vanished, and we cannot find in consciousness a mere 
perception of an individual object, but only that kind of perception 
which sees the object in its process of production. This indicates 
the point of view of this book. It is an attempt to show the 
psychological foundations of the more important educational factors 
in civilization and its schools. Special stress is laid on the evolu- 
tion of the higher activities or faculties and on the method of it. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK- 



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